Mary Aikenhead
Encyclopedia
Mother Mary Frances Aikenhead (19 January 1787 – 22 July 1858) was born in Daunt's Square off Grand Parade, Cork
Cork (city)
Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. She was the founder of the Roman Catholic religious order the Religious Sisters of Charity
Religious Sisters of Charity
The Religious Sisters of Charity or Irish Sisters of Charity is a Roman Catholic religious order founded by Mary Aikenhead in Ireland in 1815.Its motto is "Caritas Christi urget nos" ....

 and of St. Vincent's Hospital
St. Vincent's University Hospital
St. Vincent's Hospital is a teaching hospital located at Elm Park, south of the city of Dublin, Ireland. It is at the junction of Merrion Road and Nutley Lane opposite the Merrion Centre and adjacent to Elm Park Golf Club.-History:St. Vincent's Hospital was founded in 1834 on St...

 in Dublin.

Biography

The daughter of David Aikenhead, a physician, member of the Anglican Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...

, and Mary Stacpole, a Roman Catholic. She was baptised in the Anglican Communion
Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is an international association of national and regional Anglican churches in full communion with the Church of England and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury...

 on 4 April 1787. Mary was quite frail and probably considered to be asthmatic and it was recommended that she was fostered to a nanny called Mary Rourke who lived on higher ground on Eason's Hill, Shandon, Cork. It is thought that Mary was secretly baptised a Catholic from this early age by Mary Rourke who was a devout Catholic. Her parents would visit every week until 1793 when her father decided he wanted her to rejoin the family in Daunt's Square.. The Rourkes also joined the family and worked as servants to the family.

She was aged 15 when she was officially baptised a Roman Catholic on 6 June 1802, a time after the death of her father on 15 December 1801, who had himself been received into the Roman Catholic Church on his death-bed.

Accustomed as she was to an active life of charity, and feeling called to the religious life, she looked in vain for an order devoted to outside charitable work. She was chosen by Archbishop Murray
Daniel Murray (archbishop)
Daniel Murray was a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin.He was educated at Dr. Betagh's school, and at Salamanca, and ordained priest in 1790. After some years as curate in Dublin he was transferred to Arklow, and was there in 1798 when the rebellion broke out...

, Bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

 Coadjutor of Dublin, to carry out his plan of founding a congregation of the Sisters of Charity in Ireland, and in preparation for it made a novitiate of three years (1812–15) in the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin
Bar Convent
The Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin at Micklegate Bar, York, better known as Bar Convent, is the oldest surviving Roman Catholic convent in England, established in 1686. The laws of England at this time prohibited the foundation of Catholic convents and as a result of this, the...

 at Micklegate Bar, York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

, the rule of which corresponded most nearly to the ideas of the Archbishop. She there assumed the name she kept till death, Sister Mary Augustine.

On 1 September 1815, the first members of the new Order took their vows, Sister Mary Augustine being appointed Superior-General. The following sixteen years were filled with the arduous work of organizing the community and extending its sphere of labor to every phase of charity, chiefly hospital and rescue work.

In 1831 overexertion and disease shattered Aikenhead's health, leaving her an invalid. Her activity was unceasing, however, and she directed her sisters in their heroic work during the plague of 1832, placed them in charge of new institutions, and sent them on missions to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

.

Mary Aikenhead was the foundress of St. Margaret's Hospice, as it has been known since 1950, has changed its name to St. Margaret of Scotland Hospice.

She died in Dublin, aged 71, having left her Order in a flourishing condition, in charge of ten institutions, besides innumerable missions and branches of charitable work. She is interred in the cemetery attached to St. Mary Magdalen's, Donnybrook.

Heritage centre

The Mary Aikenhead Heritage Centre details Mary's life and the Religious Sisters of Charity. It is located at Our Lady's Hospice
Our Lady's Hospice
Our Lady's Hospice is a Hospice with its main centre in Harold's Cross, Dublin and a specialist palliative care unit in Blackrock, County Dublin in Ireland. The Hospice was founded and run by the Religious Sisters of Charity, a congregation themselves founded by Mary Aikenhead. They provide...

, Harolds Cross
Harolds Cross
Harold's Cross is an urban village and inner suburb on the south side of Dublin, Ireland.- Location :Harold's Cross is situated north of Terenure and Rathgar, west of Rathmines, east of Crumlin and Kimmage, and directly south from the Grand Canal at Clanbrassil Street...

 in the building called Our Lady's Mount. This is where Mary Aikenhead spent the remainder of her life. The building was later used to establish Our Lady's Hospice in 1879.

See also

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