Courtney McGrail
Nano Nagle continues to inspire today, writes Sr Mary O’Brien
It’s been a year since Pope Francis declared Irishwoman Nano Nagle ‘Venerable’. It’s an important step on the road to sainthood. Of course canonisation does not ‘create’ saints. It simply examines the lives of holy persons and declares some to be worthy of recognition by the faithful as examples of Christian living.
Why does the Church bother with such a process? Because it wants to provide individuals and communities with examples of saintly (God-centred) lives. Human beings rightly look to human models and examples for inspiration and encouragement on life’s journey.
Nano Nagle (christened Honora) was born in 1718 in Ballygriffin, near Mallow in Co. Cork. Her home was in the beautiful valley of the Blackwater, near the Nagle Mountains, so named after her ancestors, wealthy Catholic landowners in the region. The Penal Laws (enacted in 1695) made it unlawful for Catholics to be educated, to open a school or to teach in one, and forbade them to travel overseas for their education.
A branch of the Nagle family who were merchants in Cork city had strong connections on continental Europe, particularly in France. It was through these channels that Nano, her sister Ann and possibly her father (whose life was in danger at this time because of his known Catholic stance) were able to travel to the continent, smuggled, perhaps, in a cargo ship from the quays of Cork.
Close relatives
Nano and her sister Ann were educated for the next six years at the Benedictine convent in Ypres, where the Nagles had many close relatives. After leaving the boarding school at Ypres, they moved to Paris for ‘finishing school’, where they enjoyed a sophisticated and glitzy life in French courtly society.
Nano enjoyed the endless round of balls and high society parties, and we are told that she “would gladly have stayed there forever.” She was famous for her singing voice and for her astounding beauty. She was described as “a beautiful and fascinating girl, whose means enabled her to enjoy the ease and luxury of fashionable continental life, while yet young and surrounded by admiring circles, refused the hands of men distinguished in the world”.
However, her biographer tells us that, in the midst of this courtly glamour, “she never neglected the main point”. We can only guess what this means.
After their father’s death, Nano and her sister returned to Ireland and went to live with their mother in Dublin, where they found widespread poverty. When Nano discovered that her sister Ann had given away a valuable piece of silk to relieve a distressed family, it set her thinking about how she herself might serve the poor. With obstacles on all sides, she could not see a way. Her first step was to return to Paris to find her vocation as a member of a religious order.
However, after a very short time there, she was advised by a Jesuit spiritual director to return to Ireland to address the poverty and oppression of her native land.
Back in Cork, where her brother Joseph lived, Nano rented a mud cabin in Cove Lane (now Douglas Street), and set up her first school in defiance of the law, and in complete secrecy at first, even from her brother.
Her secret was soon discovered by him, as she described in a letter to a friend: “This passed on very well until one day a poor man came to him, begging to speak to me to take his child into my school. On which he came to his wife and me, laughing at the conceit of a man who thought I was in the situation of a school mistress. Then I owned up that I had set up a school.”
The first school in Cove Lane welcomed about 30 children, all the poorest of the poor. Within a year the numbers had risen to 200. There were five schools for girls and two for boys. Nano employed teachers at her own expense, and insisted that literacy, numeracy and life-skills, as well as religious education, were part of the daily curriculum in all her schools. She visited her schools each day and personally supervised the catechesis and sacramental preparation of the pupils. This she did, knowing that a price was on her head and on the heads of her collaborating teachers.
The status of Nano Nagle as ‘pioneer of Catholic education’ ensures her a place in the history books. She will be remembered as benefactor of the poor, friend of the sick and homeless and as ‘Lady of the Lantern’, who braved the dangerous streets of Cork by night to bring comfort to the sick and lonely.
For laying the foundations of Catholic education in Penal Ireland, for introducing the Ursuline Sisters to Cork; for establishing a model of unenclosed consecrated life (‘the walking nuns’, as the early members of the Sisters of Charitable Instruction – later to be known as Presentation Sisters – were known); for befriending prostitutes and ‘beggars’ brats’ – for these and other things, Nano Nagle will be remembered and rightly celebrated.
However, she is not declared venerable by the Church for any or all of these amazing achievements, good and necessary as they all were in her time.
She is declared venerable because her life was God-centred and because of the great ‘Why’ which impelled her to spend all her wealth and personal talents and energy as she did. We know from her biographer that she spent four hours in prayer each morning in the church of St Finbarr South before she set out on her daily travels across the city, and as many hours in the evening in her little cabin.
To know the real Nano Nagle and to understand the source of her seeming unbounded compassion, we look to her letters. There we find gems like the following: “The Almighty is all-sufficient”; “God’s divine Hand will support us”; “Divine Providence does everything for the best”; “It is all God’s work”. Nano is not on a personal crusade. She is on mission – sent by God on a path that costs her everything, conscious that her service of people is God-inspired and God-directed.
One message, among many, emerging from the life of Nano Nagle is that one person’s contribution can have repercussions across the globe. She believed in taking small, ‘noiseless’ steps in faith to relieve the burdens of others and to bring some light into the darkness that surrounded her. We are told that “compassion overtook every one of her plans”.
Mission
Her mission, like that of her Master, was to bring good news to the poor and liberation to those who were oppressed. A telling entry in the Annals of South Presentation records that “she was deeply wounded at the sight of so many that were delivered up a prey to the miseries of ignorance – she saw the churches deserted, and the voices silent which should have thundered aloud with all their energy – she was shocked to see the Word of God chained down by injustice – with such incentives nothing could deter her”.
Little wonder that, at her death in 1784 at the age of 66, the newspapers of Cork competed with each other in lamenting her passing. Next day The Hibernian Chronicle published the obituary: “Last Wednesday the indisposition of Miss Nagle was announced in the sorrowing countenances of the poor of this city, to whom she was the best of benefactors and patronesses. She died this day about noon, and truly indescribable is the extreme of universal lamentation for the departure of a lady possessed of all that merit.”
The Volunteer Journal of April 29, 1784, predicted that her name would be remembered: “Died. Last Monday. Miss Nagle, foundress of the South Nunnery…Her unremitted efforts in the cause of charity have raised a monument to her name which will resist the all-destructive hand of time.”
The life of Nano Nagle continues to inspire men and women today in all five continents. She is truly a woman for all seasons with a message for every age, including ours.
Mary O’Brien is a Presentation Sister.
