The Religious Sisters of Charity or Irish Sisters of Charity is a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

religious institute founded by Mary Aikenhead in Ireland on 15 January 1815. Its motto is ('The love Christ urges us on'; ). The institute has its headquarters in Dublin. The congregation is governed by a congregational leader, assisted by a group of sisters known as the general leadership team or the general council. In England and Scotland, it operates as a registered charity. The Religious

Sisters of Charity of Australia The Sisters of Charity of Australia (who use the postnominal initials of RSC) is a congregation of religious sisters in the Catholic Church who have served the people of Australia since 1838. History Mother Mary Aikenhead, who had founded the R ...

is constituted as a distinct Congregation.

History

The religious institute was founded by Mary Frances Aikenhead (1787–1858) who opened its first convent in Dublin in 1815. In 1834 St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin was set up by Mary Aikenhead. In 1838 five sisters arrived in Australia — the first religious women to set foot on Australian soil — and later opened a convent in

Parramatta Parramatta () is a suburb and major Central business district, commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney, located in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district on the ban ...

. Since 1842 the Australian congregation has operated independently. The sisters arrived in England in 1840. They first came to

Birkenhead Birkenhead (; cy, Penbedw) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; historically, it was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the south bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liver ...

in 1900. As of 2020, most of the sisters in residence are involved in parish ministry. The provincial house is in

Acton, London Acton () is a town and area in west London, England, within the London Borough of Ealing. It is west of Charing Cross. At the 2011 census, its four wards, East Acton, Acton Central, South Acton and Southfield, had a population of 62,480, a ...

. In 1845, Mother Aikenhead had been advised for health reasons to move to the country. She purchased “Greenmount”, a late 18th century house at Harold’s Cross. Renamed "Our Lady’s Mount", it became the motherhouse of the congregation, housing the novitiate and a school. In 1879, the motherhouse was moved to Mount St. Anne's in Milltown. The Sisters operate a heritage centre within the grounds of

Our Lady's Hospice Our Lady's Hospice & Care Services is a hospice and health care provider with two locations: one at Harold's Cross, Dublin and a satellite facility at Blackrock, County Dublin in Ireland. It provides specialist care for people with a range of n ...

, Harold's Cross, Dublin.

Ministry

In addition to the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the Religious Sisters of Charity take a fourth vow: to devote their lives to the service of the poor. The community is active in Ireland, England, Scotland, Australia, California, Nigeria, Zambia and Malawi, serving in health care, education, pastoral and social work, catechesis, home visitation, home for the handicapped and adult education. The Generalate is located at Sandymount, Dublin In 1821 the Governor of Kilmainham Gaol asked sisters to visit women inmates; prison visitation remains an important ministry for the Congregation. The Stanhope Street Primary School, Dublin originally opened in 1867. A new building on the same site continues to educate students. In keeping with their work with the homeless, in June 2017 the Religious Sisters of Charity launched the opening of 28 new homes for disabled, homeless and vulnerable people, in Harold’s Cross, Dublin. The Religious Sisters of Charity arrived in Nigeria in 1961."Religious Sisters of Charity", Nigeria Conference of Women Religious
/ref> In Lagos, Nigeria the sisters staff St. Joseph’s Clinic, Kirikiri.

Hospice work

* When the congregation's motherhouse moved to Mount St. Anne's in 1879, the sisters opened Our Lady's Hospice at Harold's Cross, pioneering the modern hospice movement under superior, Anna Gaynor. By the following year, it had a capacity of forty beds."Our Heritage", Our Lady's Hospice & Care Services
/ref> **In December 2003, Our Lady's Hospice opened a satellite unit for specialist palliative care in Blackrock, Co. Dublin, provided through the generosity of the Louis and Zelie Martin Foundation. * In 1905 they established St. Joseph's Hospice in Hackney. In August 1939, St. Joseph’s Hospice was taken over as an Air Raid Casualty Station and the patients moved to a nursing home in Bath. In 1952,

Cicely Saunders Dame Cicely Mary Strode Saunders (22 June 1918 – 14 July 2005) was an English nurse, social worker, physician and writer. She is noted for her work in terminal care research and her role in the birth of the hospice movement, emphasising the i ...

, a pioneer in

palliative care Palliative care (derived from the Latin root , or 'to cloak') is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Wit ...

came to work at St. Joseph's, where she would remain for seven years, researching pain control. The hospice subsequently became a limited company and took over the convent for additional space, while St. Joseph's Convent was relocated to a new building on the grounds with a dedicated care component. * The community expanded its work to Scotland in 1948, and two years later opened St. Margaret's Hospice in Clydebank. Due to increased demand, in September 1971 a new St. Margaret of Scotland Hospice, with a sixty bed capacity was opened nearby. That too has subsequently been expanded. * In 1957, at the request of Bishop James Scanlan of Motherwell, four sisters, with the assistance of the

Society of Saint Vincent de Paul The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP or SVdP or SSVP) is an international voluntary organization in the Catholic Church, founded in 1833 for the sanctification of its members by personal service of the poor. Innumerable Catholic parishes have ...

established a Nursing Home for the frail elderly and terminally ill at Assumption House in

Airdrie, North Lanarkshire Airdrie (; sco, Airdrie; gd, An t-Àrd Ruigh) is a town in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It lies on a plateau roughly 400 ft (130 m) above sea level, and is approximately 12 miles (19 km) east of Glasgow city centre. , the town had a ...

. Initially providing thirteen beds, by 1965 it accommodated twenty-one. By the end of the 1970s it became apparent that much of the space was occupied by long-term elderly patients, to the almost the complete exclusion of the terminally ill. Additional space was needed, and as Assumption House required significant repair, the sisters arranged to take over the former St. Margaret's School. St. Andrew's Hospice opened in 1986 with a capacity for thirty beds; an extension was added in 2006 for offices and administration. In 1892 Agnes Bernard of the Sisters of Charity started a convent and woollen mill in

Foxford Foxford () is a village 16 km south of Ballina in County Mayo, Ireland. It stands on the N26 national primary route from Swinford to Ballina and has a railway station served by trains between Manulla Junction and Ballina. Foxford lie ...

in County Mayo. The woollen mills are still (2017) an important employer.

Controversies

Child abuse

The Sisters of Charity is one of 18 religious congregations which managed residential institutions for children investigated by the

Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) was one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. Commencing its work in 1999, it was commonly known ...

, and was party to the 2002, €128-million indemnity agreement with the Republic of Ireland State. The Commission's work started in 1999 and it published its public report, commonly referred to as the Ryan report, on 20 May 2009. Following publication of the Ryan report in 2009 the Sisters of Charity offered to contribute a further €5 million towards the €1.5 billion redress costs incurred by the State involving former residents of the institutions. As of 2017, the Sisters of Charity had contributed €2 million of their 2009 offer plus €3m in waived legal costs from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

Magdalene asylums

The Religious Sisters of Charity were one of four Catholic organisations that ran Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. These institutions operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries to house " fallen women". In 1993, to allow for the sale of laundry and convent lands for a private housing development in High Park,

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

, a licensed exhumation of a

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

that had been in use between the 1880-1970s took place. The mass grave was found to contain the remains of 155 women - 22 more bodies than had originally been reported to have been buried there. Many of the bodies exhibited evidence of harm, such as broken limbs encased in plaster.{{cite web, url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29307705, title=Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns, publisher=BBC Magazine, date=23 September 2013, access-date=13 April 2022 The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child ultimately called for a government inquiry, as did the United Nations Committee Against Torture ( UNCAT). UNCAT also called for a redress scheme to be set up for survivors.{{cite news, url=http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/investigate-magdalene-abuses-un-157076.html, title=Investigate Magdalen Abuses: UN, last=O'Doherty, first=Caroline, publisher=Irish Examiner, date=7 June 2011, access-date=13 April 2022 A formal state apology was issued in 2013, and a €50–60 million compensation scheme for survivors was established. Neither the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

,{{cite web, url=http://irishpost.co.uk/magdalene-compensation-snub-is-rejection-of-laundry-women/, title=Magdalene compensation snub is 'rejection of Laundry women', date=2 August 2013, publisher=, accessdate=19 April 2017 nor the four religious institutes that ran the Irish asylums have as yet contributed to the survivor's fund, despite demands from the Irish government. Senator Martin McAleese chaired an Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries. An Interim Report was released in October 2011. In 2013 the BBC released a special investigation, Sue Lloyd-Roberts' "Demanding justice for women and children abused by Irish nuns." The

Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute of Catholic women founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. As of 2019, the institute had about 6200 sisters worldwide, organized into a number of independent congregations. They a ...

, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, and

Sisters of Charity Many religious communities have the term Sisters of Charity in their name. Some ''Sisters of Charity'' communities refer to the Vincentian tradition, or in America to the tradition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, but others are unrelated. The ...

, have ignored requests by the UN

Committee on the Rights of the Child The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a body of experts that monitor and report on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee also monitors the Convention's three optional protoc ...

and the UN Committee Against Torture to contribute to the compensation fund for victims, including 600 still alive in March 2014. In 2013 the Sisters of Charity, along with the three other religious congregations which managed Magdalene laundries, announced that they would not be making any contribution to the State redress scheme for women who had been in the laundries.

St. Vincent Hospital

In May 2013, it was announced that the new

National Maternity Hospital, Dublin The National Maternity Hospital ( ga, An tOspidéal Náisiúnta Máithreachais), popularly known as Holles Street Hospital, is a large maternity hospital in Ireland. The hospital is located at the eastern corner of Merrion Square, at its junction ...

would be built on a site at

St. Vincent's University Hospital St. Vincent's Hospital ( ga, Ospidéal Ollscoile Naomh Uinseann) is a teaching hospital located at Elm Park, south of the city of Dublin, Ireland. It is at the junction of Merrion Road and Nutley Lane opposite the Merrion Centre, Dublin, Merrion ...

, Elm Park, founded in 1834 by Mother Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the Religious Sisters of Charity, with the Sisters having ownership, involvement in management, and representation on the board.{{cite web , url=http://www.thejournal.ie/holles-street-hospital-move-st-vincents-926761-May2013/ , title=National Maternity Hospital to leave Holles St in €150m move , publisher=TheJournal.ie , date=27 May 2013 , access-date=2013-06-18 , author=Reilly, Gavan On 29 May 2017, in response to weeks of pressure and public outrage, the Sisters of Charity announced that they were ending their role in St Vincent's Healthcare Group and would not be involved in the ownership or management of the new hospital, and would gift the lands to the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, worth some €200 million; the two sisters on the board resigned.{{cite web , url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/29/sisters-of-charity-nuns-give-up-role-in-dublin-maternity-hospital , title=Sisters of Charity give up role in Dublin maternity hospital , newspaper=The Guardian , date=29 May 2017 , author= Henry McDonald , access-date= 29 May 2017 It later emerged that the mechanism for control of the hospital going forward was to transfer ownership to a trust - St. Vincent's Holdings - which would take over the hospital when the new building, costing €1 billion and being paid for by the state, was complete. St. Vincent's Holdings would then lease the hospital back to the state, for 99 years.{{cite news, url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/q-a-why-has-the-national-maternity-hospital-project-become-such-a-mess-1.4601745, title=Q&A: Why has the National Maternity Hospital project become such a mess?, last=Bray, first=Jennifer, publisher=Irish Times, date=23 June 2021, access-date=13 April 2022 This time period was later extended to 299 years.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Religious Sisters of Charity website

Religious Sisters of Charity Ireland website

Religious Sisters of Charity of England and Scotland website

Sisters of Charity of Australia website

Our Lady's Hospice
{{Authority control Religious institutes in the Vincentian tradition Catholic religious institutes established in the 19th century Catholic female orders and societies Religious organizations established in 1815 Charities based in the Republic of Ireland 1815 establishments in the United Kingdom