Kenmare was indebted to the Sisters of St Clare, a celebratory mass heard on Sunday at the end of a journey of more than a century and a half.
Arriving to an impoverished town after the Famine, the nuns educated girls, set up primary and secondary schools for girls and boys, invigorated the lace making industry bringing Kenmare lace to world attention.
“Sisters, we are indebted to you and we will miss you. However at a profound level, you will never leave,” Jean MacGearailt said at the beginning of the packed Mass led by Bishop of Kerry Dr Ray Browne at Holy Cross Church Kenmare.
An enclosed contemplative order, the Poor Clares had arrived in Kenmare from Newry, Co Down at the invitation of a local archdeacon. They had entered Kenmare via Moll’s Gap so they could get to see the Lakes of Killarney and Kenmare Bay for the first and the last time before they entered their convent, the congregation was told.
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Noting the symmetry of the occasion on Sunday, the abbess general Sr Julie McGoldrick said seven sisters had arrived to Kenmare in the autumn of 1861. “It seems poignant to us that exactly seven of us are present in the mass 161 years later,” she said.
The time since has seen dramatic changes. It would now take five hours, not five days, to reach Kenmare from Newry. However “a more profound difference” had taken place in the changes in the Catholic Church and religious life, Sr McGoldrick said.
Having to leave Kenmare was “a source of deep sadness”, she added.
As the church filled with applause for the sisters, two young parishioners received a candle from the abbess to symbolise the light of St Clare would continue in the parish.
In his homily, parish priest Fr George Hayes noted how Ireland had greatly changed over the years. The church had acknowledged the darkness but, he said: “Let us not forget the good. Let us not forget the silent and often unseen contribution of countless women.
“In a world where there is so much that is woke, let us not forget the courage of countless religious sisters. Let us not forget that goodness.”
The nuns like so many other nuns were broad minded and saw the bigger picture, he said.
The sights of processions, the sounds of the convent school, the smells of beeswax and the of the coca room where children would get coca and cakes long before school meals were thought of were recalled by one past pupil.
Candles were also lit for the 43 nuns buried in Kenmare and Liam Hegarty, nephew of one of the last of the Kenmare nuns, Sr Assumpta Hegarty from Killarney, lit a candle for the families of the nuns.
Earlier this year and down to just three nuns, the order “regrettably” announced they no longer had the numbers to maintain a presence in the town.
Some 25 years ago the nuns gave their convent, and schools and land to the Department of Education. Their last remaining property in Kenmare where they lived is likely to be sold, it is understood.
The order was begun in Assisi in Italy under the direction of St Francis in the early 13th century. It spread to Ireland in 1830. There are now just two remaining convents here: Newry and Harold’s Cross in Dublin.