By Sister Katherine Doyle
Mercy Day is a celebration of both the past and present. We celebrate the gift of our Mercy community given to us by Catherine, but Catherine didn’t build our community by herself. We are the fruit of a circle of Mercy women across generations. Our hearts fill with gratitude and appreciation for the courage and faith that sustained our early “Mercy mothers” as they spread the Mercy mission throughout the world. Because of their vision, creativity and perseverance, we are who we are today.
When the House of Mercy on Baggot Street opened its doors to the needy poor of Ireland, Catherine, unable to reside there at the time, entrusted the day-to-day management to Anna Maria Doyle and Catherine Byrn. It was the first of many entrustments that marked her life. Catherine believed if her sisters were firmly rooted in the Mercy charism, they could carry on the Mercy mission and adapt it to the specific needs of those they served. Rooted in Mercy, it would bloom where it was planted. The foundations of her time reflect that belief. Catherine planted them but left the care and tending to each individual community founder.
It was one thing to be entrusted with a new foundation during Catherine’s lifetime, when she was there to guide the sisters through her letters, visits and teaching. It is quite another to carry on the mission in a strange land, amid a different culture and unexpected circumstances. This was exactly what happened to the many Mercy mothers who brought the Mercy mission to America. Mother Agnes O’Connor, foundress of New York Mercy, discovered a crowded city where young Irish girls with no money or sponsors arrived daily after surviving harrowing ocean voyages. A House of Mercy was an essential part of her community’s work. Prison visitation, education and care of orphans all comprised the New York ministry.
Mother Mary Teresa Farrell from Naas anticipated opening a school to serve the Catholic families in Little Rock, Arkansas, only to discover that they had moved on due to unfavorable conditions. Like Mother Agnes, she had to adapt quickly to new challenges. She and her sisters had to learn to communicate with the Indigenous peoples who lived in the area.
Mother Baptist Russell had the same experience. Coming to post-gold rush San Francisco to open a school, she found that the Presentation Sisters had just opened one, and the pressing need was longer there. She, too, had to adapt her response to meet the most pressing needs of the people. Mother Mary Austin Carroll challenged the racism of New Orleans’ Irish Channel residents by constructing her school for Black children adjacent to the convent walls to prevent it from being burned down like three other schools for Black children before it. Mission had to find new modes of expression because need was ever evolving.
All the founding mothers in the United States faced animosity from nativists—sometimes physical danger—the absence of adequate resources and church dynamics vastly different from those in Ireland. Their willingness to adapt allowed the Mercy community throughout the country to make Mercy a reality wherever they served. What is remarkable is the willingness of the early sisters to embrace hardship without complaint, to work with what was and to win over communities through the witness of life and works.
Early Mercy mothers not only had to make ministry adaptations—they also had to discern what was core to Mercy Life and what could be changed. Questions surfaced, such as “Can Mercy have academies?” or “Could the white elements of the lay sisters’ habit be discarded?” and had to be answered. The early mothers taught us how to resolve such questions … they consulted each other, sought a unified understanding, looked to the vision of Catherine and accepted the collective decision.
Our founding mothers had to interpret the charism given to them by Catherine and apply that understanding to the realities of their time. This is still our task. Reflecting on their stories reminds us that decisions were not made because they were practical, convenient or popular. They were made because they were rooted in the Mercy charism. That is the wonder we celebrate today: 200 years of faithful Mercy women who have made the works of Mercy the business of their lives. Now, it is our moment to carry on that continuing legacy.