Stanislaus Kennedy sits at the table of her office tucked away inside The Sanctuary in Dublin city centre. Behind her, a collection of artwork and photographs from her time working at the helm of homeless charity Focus Ireland plaster the yellow wall.
Born and raised on a farm near Lispole on Kerry’s Dingle peninsula, the long-time social campaigner known as Sr Stan joined the Religious Sisters of Charity as a determined 18-year-old fuelled by a strong desire to work with the poor and disadvantaged. She was based in Kilkenny initially.
“I’ve been around a long time. I was 20 years in Kilkenny, developing the social services there. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s there were no social services in Ireland. Basic things like meals on wheels, services for people with special needs, for older people, that didn’t exist yet.”
She went on to earn a bachelor of social sciences and a master’s in social policy from University College Dublin, graduating in 1969 and 1980 respectively.
Having turned 85 earlier this year, the nun has been spending a lot of time reflecting on and talking to her broad social network about what it means to be grateful, culminating in the release of her latest book: Gratitude: Unlocking the Fullness of Life.
With more than 100 contributors – hailing “from all walks of life, some of them public figures, some of them not so public, not known at all” – Sr Stan says that working on this project was a fulfilling experience, one that unlocked a kind of positive domino effect.
“It was interesting, it was kind of like a wave of gratefulness. When I thanked them for agreeing and they thanked me for asking them. So it was as if the gratefulness was contagious.”
Prominent figures across a wide range of disciplines are featured, from politicians and musicians to journalists and charity workers. The list includes former taoiseach Enda Kenny, the North’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill; Irish Times columnist Justine McCarthy and former footballer Niall Quinn.
When Sr Stan founded Focus Ireland in the mid-1980s (then called Focus Point), she thought homelessness could be solved within 10 years. Sadly this is not today’s reality – instead the number of people seeking emergency accommodation in Ireland has reached record figures, surpassing 14,000 earlier this year. She remains firm in her opinion that successive governments are to blame for this failure.
“I really believed that we could end homelessness. And we could have if the government had continued to build housing and didn’t stop in the ‘90s, and so the number of people that are homeless has grown and grown and grown.
“Back when I started it was small and it was manageable,” she says. “We need housing badly. Different kinds of housing to suit different kinds of needs. People can’t buy houses, they can’t rent them, they can’t get social housing.”
If the Government’s target, expressed in 2021, to eradicate homelessness is to be met by 2030, then a much more “radical approach” is needed according to Sr Stan.
“We need to give preferential treatment to the people who are long-term homeless, in other words a certain percentage of the long-term homeless would be given housing every year so then that way you’d reduce the numbers who are in bed and breakfast and hotels over time.”
This system would make what seems now an impossible task more manageable, then allowing the focus to shift and “concentrate on the flow of homelessness rather than having these high numbers”.
“I think it could be [ended] if we really set our minds to it,” she says.
[ Homelessness in Ireland hits record high of 14,760 peopleOpens in new window ]
Sr Stan became the first to study homelessness among women in Dublin, uncovering a then unknown population of “hidden homeless”. “People thought at that stage that there weren’t women homeless, because they were invisible, there were only men.”
The nun spent a year with a group of eight young women who were homeless, living with them on the top floor of a building that she had rented out on Eustace Street in Dublin. “They weren’t used to being relaxed and easy with a nun. They couldn’t work me out. They didn’t know what I was doing. Some of them had been reared in care,” she recalls.
But as time went on they established a relationship of trust, and that is when the women’s stories started to emerge.
“What I learned then was that there’s no such thing as a typical homeless person, every one of them is different ... all have their own story, their own background.”
In September 1984, her study was published and heeding the women’s advice she established Focus Point at the end of the following year as “a point in Dublin for homeless people, a point where people could get their life together”.
Sr Stan worked with architect Gerry Cahill to redevelop the former Sisters of Charity convent at Dublin’s Stanhope Street, into 80 apartments and 10 terraced family homes. Following the success of this endeavour, she sought permission and funding to repurpose several other religious buildings to accommodate the capital’s homeless.
Right now, she says Focus Ireland is working on the conversion of a Dominican convent in Cabra to 60 housing units.
Women should have an equal role in the church. I think if more women were involved it would make a difference ... the priesthood shouldn’t be exclusive for men
In response to the injustice and challenges she saw faced by some asylum seekers and refugees entering Ireland, Sr Stan founded the Immigrant Council of Ireland in 2001 as an organisation that would promote and support the rights of the immigrants. More than 20 years later, the rising tide of hostility directed towards Ireland’s migrant community is ever-more disturbing.
“It’s urgent ... we are very aware of a small group of people, the far right, who are disrupting the whole process. That’s a concern and the only way to deal with that is to be positive in what we are doing and do it well.”
Sr Stan encourages people to be wary of material they may be consuming online. “I think what’s important is that what people say and do is based on fact. It’s scaremongering, I think it’s important that that is confronted,” she warns.
“We said when we established the Immigrant Council that immigration was a positive thing and that it would continue ... and it will continue. We must be open to that ... A lot more needs to be done in terms of providing the kind of accommodation that is suitable for them. Unfortunately we’ve fallen back on that, and we are now providing tented accommodation.”
On the position of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Sr Stan carefully considers her words before answering. “It’s a hard time I think,” she ventures.
“Numbers are declining. Numbers going to church, numbers joining religious orders, joining the priesthood. It’s a time when we need to reflect on what are the essential things for us.”
“I think for example that women, they should have a very public part, they should have an equal role in the church. I think if more women were involved it would make a difference. At all levels.” She concludes that “the priesthood shouldn’t be exclusive for men”.
Asked if there could be any other changes, Sr Stan pauses again before saying:
“The core of Christian faith is love. I think if we can do our best to promote that in every way, we can create communities and groups who really care for each other and who really care for the dispossessed.
“I’m old now and not any way as active as I used to be but the people who are at the bottom of the ladder will always be very important to me. Even in my prayer, they will be an important part of it. I would try to be focused outwards rather than focused inward. I think if we could ensure that happened in each parish, that they were outward looking and caring for the people in need, it would make a difference.”
Throughout her time in the religious order, Sr Stan has been unafraid to go against the grain at times in her progressive advocacy. In 2015, the nun announced her decision to vote in favour of same-sex marriage in the referendum that was upcoming at that time.
“I have thought a lot about this,” she told The Irish Times at the time. “I am going to vote Yes in recognition of the gay community as full members of society. They should have an entitlement to marry. It is a civil right and a human right.”
Speaking in a personal capacity at a time when leaders of the Catholic Church were calling for a No vote, she said “I have a big commitment to equality for all members of society. It’s what my life has been about.
“We have discriminated against members of the gay and lesbian community for too long. This is a way of embracing them as full members of society,” she said.
Today she thinks “some parishes are very good and very open about it [welcoming members of the LBGTQ+ community] and others aren’t so it’s hard to make a generalisation. I think openness to all people ... is very important”.
Of the recent revelations found by the scoping inquiry report on child sex abuse in schools run by religious congregations, Sr Stan says:
“It’s shocking. It’s appalling. And it has to be talked about and something has to be done about it because there are people suffering. It’s beyond belief.”
“There are people who have lost total trust in themselves as well as in others, that building-up of trust has to be done.”
“Maybe the church needs help to do that,” she suggests. “Counselling is one thing. I think that should definitely be available to people to ensure that they are helped to be healed.”
Having pioneered Social Innovators Ireland, which grew into the Young Social Innovators of the Year (YSI), Sr Stan says she is inspired by Ireland’s next generation and says we need to harness their insights if there’s to be hope for a better future.
“Young people are wonderful. They have this idealism and they can see things more clearly than the rest of us because they’re not touched by them. They can see them with new eyes, and therefore they can feed that back into society.”
Gratitude: Unlocking the Fullness of Life by Sr Stan is published by Red Stripe Press
This article was amended on November 6th
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