1 Great Talent for Management: Mother Xavier Maguire c1819-1879 Helen Mary Delaney CTE, BA, M Ed Admin, MCL, DCL, PhD A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for degree of Master of Theology University of Divinity 2017 2 Abstract This thesis is a part chronological and part thematic account of the life of Mother Xavier Maguire who founded the Convent of Mercy Geelong. From a wealthy Irish family, she entered the original house of the newly founded Sisters of Mercy in Dublin and after her profession became the novice mistress and then superior. During her time as superior foundations of Sisters of Mercy were made in Ireland and overseas and she was involved in the planning for the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin. She was invited to establish a foundation of Sisters of Mercy in the flourishing city of Geelong and arrived there with five companions in 1859.
During her twenty years in charge, she established an orphanage and several schools and she and members of her flourishing community undertook visitation to hospitals, prisons and needy families, as well as catechesis in outlying areas, the instruction of converts and the teaching of music. By the time of her death, the community numbered twenty five. Mother Xavier belongs to that band of intrepid women of different religious congregations who contributed so much to the early history of the Catholic Church in Australia particularly in the areas of education, health care and social welfare and whose contribution is largely unknown and unappreciated. This thesis is an attempt to address this oversight by focusing on the life of one such woman.
3 Declaration of Originality I affirm that this thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other institution. To the best of my knowledge, this thesis contains no other material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis. Helen M Delaney 26 July 2017 4 Acknowledgements With gratitude, I acknowledge the wise guidance, unobtrusive support and knowledgeable advice of my supervisors, Rev Professor Austin Cooper OMI and Rev Dr Max Vodola. I also thank the several archivists without whose expert assistance my research would have been much more daunting and difficult.
In particular I wish to thank the following: Claudette Brennan from the Sacred Heart College Geelong Archives Marianne Cosgrove from the Mercy International Archives Dublin Noelle Dowling from the Archdiocese of Dublin Archives Olivia Parkinson and Jessie Llewellyn from the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea Archives Aphington. For assistance in locating material both locally and in other libraries, I wish to thank the staff of Mannix Library at Catholic Theological College, especially Lisa Gerber. Finally I am most grateful to the many friends and colleagues who offered advice and made suggestions to improve this thesis. 5 Table of Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………….
2 Declaration of Originality ………………………………………… 3 Acknowledgements …. 6 Chapter 1 Context and Family. 11 Chapter 2 Sister of Mercy …………………………………. 23 Chapter 3 Geelong – Establishment……………………….
39 Chapter 4 Geelong – Consolidation………………………. 54 Chapter 5 Works of Mercy. 75 Chapter 6 Mother Xavier’s Contribution & Influence …. Recent Studies of Australian Religious Congregations … 115 2.
Histories of Australian Mercy Congregations …………. The Maguire family ………………………………………. Entrances and professions 1860-1879 …………………… 121 5. 123 6 Introduction The contribution of women religious to the growth of the Catholic Church in Australia until relatively recently appears to be largely unknown or overlooked and consequently little appreciated although this gap in history is now to a certain extent being addressed.1 This biography of Mother Mary Cecilia Xavier Maguire (c1819-1879), hereafter referred to as Mother Xavier where appropriate, who founded the Convent of Mercy in Geelong, is another attempt to redress this deficiency.
Some material relating to her life may be found in histories of the Melbourne Congregation of Sisters of Mercy, 2 and in publications more directly relating to the convent and school which she founded.3 Other more personal material is available in a collection of some her letters, the originals of which are held in the Mercy International Archives, Convent of Mercy, Baggot Street, Dublin, and photocopies and some typescripts in the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea Archives, Aphington.4 In Australia women religious were and still are highly involved in service to the poor and needy, especially in the areas of social welfare, education and health care.5 The ministry in social welfare began in early colonial times. The Sisters of Charity6 were the first religious institute to venture to this far away primitive British penal settlement in 1838 and began their work by ministering to the female convicts incarcerated in the Female Factory in Parramatta. Soon afterwards they moved into other areas including the visitation of the sick poor in their homes. Other religious institutes in both formal and informal ways carried out this ministry, 1 See Appendix I for some recent publications relating to Australian religious congregations.
2 See Appendix 2 for publications relating to Australian Mercy congregations. 3 See: Mary Lucina McMaster. The Foundation, Growth and Development of the Convent of Mercy, Geelong, 1859-1980. Lucina (Monica) McMaster was a boarder at Sacred Heart College.
She entered the Sisters of Mercy at Ascot Vale in 1919. In 1955 she became a member of the Geelong Convent and taught at Sacred Heart College for many years. She was known as a meticulous and accurate researcher whose findings were reliable. She died in Geelong in 1996.
See also: John Watts, Glenn Turnbull and Kathleen Walsh. Mercy Girls: The Story of Sacred Heart College, Geelong, 1860-2010, 2010. 4 Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea Archives, Alphington, Box 27, Vol. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from letters used in this study are taken from these sources.
5 In this study, the women religious referred to are generally non cloistered, ie, were able to work outside their convents. Technically they are known as sisters in contrast to those religious women who were cloistered, ie, they did not venture outside their convent walls and are referred to as nuns. Both groups usually had the prefixes of either Sister Mary or Mother Mary before their religious names. These prefixes will be omitted where appropriate in this study.
See: Mary Rose MacGinley, A Dynamic of Hope: Institutes of Women Religious in Australia, (Darlinghurst: Crossing Press, 2002) for a comprehensive historical account of the many religious institutes of women present in Australia. A religious institute is an association formally recognised by the Catholic Church in which the members pronounce public vows and live in community. They are known by various titles such as: religious congregation, eg, the Sisters of Mercy; religious institute, eg, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary; society, eg, the Society of Jesus; order, eg, the Carmelite nuns. 6 The Sisters of Charity were founded by Mother Mary Aikenhead in Dublin in 1815.
7 including, for example establishing or running orphanages or other enterprises designed to assist the poor. The Sisters of Charity were also the first to open a Catholic hospital in Australia. In 1857 St Vincent’s Hospital began in Sydney. It catered for all creeds and especially the poor.
From then on almost all Catholic public and private hospitals were under the auspices of congregations of women religious, principally the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of St John of God7 and the Little Company of Mary.8 These hospitals are found in all states and the Australian Capital Territory.9 Education was a long standing concern of the Australian bishops and had developed in a relatively unstructured and unorganised way. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, funding for Catholic and other denominational schools ceased as successive colonial governments enacted legislation to provide free, compulsory and secular education. The bishops took the courageous decision to provide a Catholic education to all those who were able to avail themselves of it.10 Most teachers had sought employment in the new state schools. The consequent staffing of Catholic schools had to depend on members of religious congregations, mainly of women religious, who often replaced lay teachers in many existing schools.
As well, primary schools were opened in small country towns, staffed and administered by religious institutes such as the Sisters of St Joseph and the Sisters of Mercy, as well as in larger towns and capital cities where many other religious institutes had answered calls for assistance expressed somewhat dramatically in 1873 by Dean Corbett, the parish priest of the Melbourne suburban parish of St Kilda, to the superior of the Presentation Convent in Limerick: From the ends of the earth I write to you for help. An Education Bill has recently been passed by our local Legislature which is diametrically opposed to our interests … Come, then in God’s name, and aid us to stem the tide of irreligion against which we must wage war. 7 The Sisters of St John of God were founded by Bishop Furlong in the diocese of Wexford in 1871. 8 The Little Company of Mary was founded by Mother Mary Potter in Nottingham, England, in 1877.
9 Australian Catholic Health Care Association, Heritage of Catholic Health Care, (East Melbourne: Australian Catholic Health Care Association, 1988), 12. 10 See: Ronald Fogarty, Catholic Education in Australia, 2 Vols, (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1959), for a comprehensive historical account of the development of Catholic Education in Australia. Volume 2 concentrates on the contribution of religious orders. 8 This impassioned plea concluded: “I shall be much obliged if you will have the kindness to send me an immediate reply.
God grant that it may be favourable. The Presentation Sisters arrived in Melbourne within the year. The staffing of the schools by members of religious institutes was done, in most cases, without adequate recompense or even none. This had some unintended beneficial consequences, for example, music teaching provided a source of income.
Many of the early religious were well educated middle class women so had much to offer in the cultural area, and again this contribution is largely overlooked. These ventures were often led by intrepid and courageous leaders of early foundations who are relatively unknown. Some thirty Sisters of Mercy, mainly from Ireland, led foundations to Australia – to capital and provincial cities or country towns, eg, Bathurst, Bendigo, Cooktown, Perth and Goulburn to name but a few. However, scholarly biographies of these women are few, only three in fact - Mothers Ursula Frayne,12 Vincent Whitty,13 and Ignatius McQuoin.14 Mother Xavier was a contemporary of and well known to the first two.
She probably did not know Mother Ignatius but may have met her when the latter visited the Convent of Mercy, Baggot Street, Dublin,15 in 1856. On the whole, details of the lives of other early founders lives are not available or subsumed in the histories of their congregations.16 A large part of the problem of undertaking research into the lives and contribution of these women is the paucity of information and reliable sources, a problem which is also relevant to 11 Quoted in: Kathleen Dunlop Kane, Adventure in Faith: The Presentation Sisters in Victoria, (Melbourne: Congregation of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Victoria, 1974), 4. 12 Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Ursula Frayne: A Biography, (Fremantle: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996). 13 Anne Hetherington & Pauline Smoothy (eds), The Correspondence of Mother Vincent Whitty 1839-1892 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2011), and Mary Xaverius O’Donoghue, Mother Vincent Whitty: Woman and Educator in a Masculine Society, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972).
14 Maureen McQuirk, Singing to the End of the Service: Elizabeth McQuoin, Founder of the Sisters of Mercy, Sydney, Australia 1865, (Caringbah: Playwright Publishing, 2007), 256-266.