Nano Nagle lived a life shaped by unjust laws. After the English army had put down revolt in Ireland, the government imposed harsh laws. They limited Catholic ownership of land, restricted Catholics from going abroad to study, and forbade the establishment of Catholic schools. Nano Nagle was born into that world where harsh laws were still in place but not strictly enforced.
Nano was the eldest child in a large and relatively wealthy Catholic family. Much of their estate in Cork had been confiscated because of their faith. She received a basic education in illegal rural classrooms (so-called hedge schools), and was smuggled to Paris for her schooling and early adult life. There she enjoyed a full social life with all its balls, parties, concerts and entertainment. She later remembered returning late at night after a party and noticing noticed poor people sheltering from the cold on the streets. She was struck by the contrast with her own life.
After her father’s death, Nano moved to Dublin with her mother and was struck by the extreme poverty there. She returned to Paris hoping to join the Ursuline Sisters but was advised to return to Ireland to help the poor in her own nation. She then settled in Cork and established a secret and illegal school for the poor, to the fury of her brother who was appalled by the risk she was taking. He later accepted her bold initiative and, with the support of her wealthy uncle, Nano founded many schools. She won the confidence of the parents of the children whom she visited, but was often abused by other people in town. In her schools she worked systematically to deepen the children’s faith and to prepare them practically for their later life. At the end of the day she also used to go out to visit elderly poor and sick people, and became known as the Lady with the Lamp.
As her schools multiplied she looked for support. Having inherited her uncle’s wealth, she went to Paris and in 1771 sponsored the Ursuline Sisters there to establish a convent in Cork. Their Rule however, prevented them from leaving the convent to visit families or to teach in small village schools. In founding the Ursuline convent she stared down the local Bishop who wished to avoid stirring sectarian hostility.
Still needing to consolidate her work by training teachers and equipping them to pass on their faith, she established a Religious Congregation in 1776. She became its Superior, and again against the Bishop’s desire to avoid publicity, built a convent on the property of the Ursuline sisters. After her death from tuberculosis in 1781 her congregation combined with a Dublin group with similar ideals and spirit to become the Presentation Sisters.
In 1866 the Presentation Sisters arrived in Tasmania, and subsequently spread more widely. The Congregation inherited her belief in education that prepared the students to have high ideals and values and to go out into the world unafraid. In the year 2000 that spirit earned her the title of ‘the Irish woman of the Millennium’.
Honora ‘Nano’ Nagle
1718, Ballygriffin, Ireland – 26 April 1784
Founder: Presentation Sisters, Presentation Convent Senior Secondary School
Her cause for canonisation began in 1984. She was declared a Servant of God in 1994 and Venerable on 31 October 2013.
Image: Wikimedia commons