Columban Sr. Ann Gray recalls the foundation of the Missionary Sisters of St. Columban 100 years ago this year and the vision of co-founders, Columban Fr. John Blowick and Lady Frances Moloney, for the congregation.
In these days of 2024, Columban Sisters throughout the world find our thoughts and our hearts turning back one hundred years towards our first Sisters. The Missionary Sisters of St. Columban came into being because two people in particular, Columban Fr. John Blowick and Lady Frances Moloney (later Mother Mary Patrick Moloney), shared a vision for a new missionary congregation, and a group of women took a huge risk and answered the call to step into this unknown journey with them.
In December 1917, in his address to the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland in the Mansion House in Dublin, Fr. John Blowick first spoke officially of including women Religious in the new mission venture of the Columban Fathers in China. He foresaw great difficulties with regard to nurses and doctors for the mission because of the attitudes prevalent in China at the time. He realized that the doctors would have to be women doctors and that because of the demands of the missionary apostolate, they would have to be Religious. This would require a new Congregation of nuns whose vow would be the medical care of the sick and whose members would be properly qualified in medicine, surgery and midwifery.
Over the subsequent three years, Fr. Blowick’s initial idea of a missionary sisterhood underwent many changes until he envisaged a missionary congregation of Sisters who would be engaged not only in the medical apostolate, but also in any apostolate which would be of service in China. To prepare for this, Fr. Blowick invited the Irish Sisters of Charity to send a small group of Sisters to train the early postulants and novices. They were deeply committed to keeping the missionary nature of the new Congregation to the fore and what would be required for mission. The Irish Sisters of Charity are a part of our history and our heritage. and we never forget our debt of gratitude to them.
In February 1922, the first group of postulants came together in Cahiracon, Co. Clare, to a house prepared for them by the Columban Fathers. In those early days, the women drawn to Cahiracon came from Ireland and Australia and from a wide variety of life and work experiences including teaching, nursing, secretarial work and farming, as well as from city and country life. Some also had had exposure to the Independence movement in Ireland at the time. What united all of them was deep faith and a concern for the poor.
In the years that followed, the Sisters would find themselves dealing with victims of floods, epidemics, hunger and war. The fledgling Congregation continued to attract other like-minded women who, as foundation members, set an example and inspiration for those of us who would follow them.