Nuns who made a big difference

A Lamp to Light Other Lamps, by Maureen Moorhouse. Union of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Harare (2013). 143 pp.

Reviewed by Fr Oskar Werrmter SJ
Pope Francis feels that the Church needs a “theology of women”. The Church must pay more attention to women, to what they have done and still do; the Church, whose model is Mary virgin and mother, must remember that she is feminine herself. Therefore this little book is timely and enlightening.

It tells the story of a group of women who derive their common spiritual heritage from Nano Nagle, an Irishwoman of the 18th century, who founded what today is known as Presentation Sisters.

In her time Britain tried to crush the Irish people by denying their children an education and suppressing their Catholic faith, Catholicism being the religion of all of Britain’s enemies at the time.

Nano was concerned, not about power politics, but about the human and spiritual development of Irish children. She could not look on passively as her people were being deprived of their very humanity.

What could a young woman all on her own do? Single-minded and daring, she started clandestine classes for the girls, later also the boys, of her home town. Eventually she attracted companions to share the growing work load.

Nano lit a lamp, and this light continued to light other lamps. In 1949 Nano’s Sisters arrived in Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe.

You do not have to be political to run into trouble with politicians. It is enough if you light a lamp for those in the shadows, women and children more often than not. The order accepted black girls in a “white” school, giving a chance to intelligent children regardless of “colour”.

The Sisters “stayed on” even when the going got tough, with government soldiers and freedom fighters chasing each other round the rural mission where Nano’s Sisters were nursing and teaching.

“The sound of gunfire and landmine blasts became part of our daily lives, and we sometimes attended funerals of curfew-breakers. There were no funerals for ‘sell-outs’. Their bodies were left to decay in the open or to be eaten by dogs,” a Sister writes in the book.

“It was hard to teach a class when one knew that a student’s father had been beaten to death and not allowed a burial, and the boy or girl had to attend class or they, too, would be branded sell-outs.”

Curfew-breakers were killed by soldiers, “sell-outs” (collaborators) by “freedom fighters”.

Responding to the needs of the poor and distressed, living and working with them—that was Nano’s “light”. Again and again the Sisters were that “light”  coming to the aid of people sitting in the “shadow of death”.

Sr Eileen Clear, an Irish Presentation Sister, worked at Mashambanzou Aids Care Centre. “Children coped better with loss and grief, and were able to deal with the day-to-day challenges of living without their parents’ love and protection. Eileen reached out to them with tremendous care, compassion and empathy. Her generosity knew no bounds”(page 129).

“The consecrated woman is mother, she must be a mother and not a ‘spinster’,” Pope Francis has told women religious superiors. Sr Eileen was clearly such a motherly woman to the bereaved children at Mashambanzou.

Nano’s daughters went through rapid changes in the last 50 years, as illustrated by photos showing changing fashions, from monstrous black nuns’ outfits to “contemporary dress”, with which the Sisters “melt so easily into the general population”.

So what about the future? What will “keep the lantern burning”?

Sr Maureen Moorhouse, the book’ author, puts great hope on Pope Francis. “We can take heart from his informal approach, and his making the poor the lynchpin of his changes.”

Strangely enough, the charism of Nano who first lit the light 250 years ago should also open the door to the future: she responded to the suffering of her people and did the unexpected, what nobody else dared to do. It is such courage and bravery that religious women of the future need.

Modern young women no longer need to join a religious order to be social workers, teachers or nurses. The doors to a professional life are open to them also in a secular environment. But the love of Christ and his passion for the poor and distressed should drive some of them beyond conventional boundary lines. Religious women should be found where no one else wants to go.

Brave and enterprising women like that will of course ask for their rightful place in the Church. Pope Francis seems to understand that. “Indeed, a woman, Mary, is more important than the bishops,” he wrote in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

He challenges pastors and theologians to tell us “what this entails with regard to the possible role of women in decision-making in different areas of the Church’s life”.

• Order from the Sisters of Presentation, Avila House, 1 Bobourne Hill, Borrowdale, Harare, Zimbabwe at $11.