Two Drogheda based communities of nuns, the Medical Missionaries of Mary and the Dominican Nuns of the Monastery of St Catherine of Siena, are to be featured in a new TV documentary examining the role of religious sisters in Ireland.
In “The Last Nuns In Ireland”, which will be broadcast at 22:15 pm on 16th January 2024 on RTÉ ONE, Newry born journalist and broadcaster Dearbhail McDonald, sets out to examine the role of female religious sisters in Ireland, from earliest times to the present day, to see how they have shaped Irish lives – for better or for worse.
If these really are “The Last Nuns in Ireland”, McDonald asks whether we can acknowledge their achievements as we deal with the legacy of the abuse scandals?
The statistics are stark. The average age of nuns in Ireland is now over 80 – and the supply of vocations to religious life has slowed to a trickle.
Thirty years of secularisation and scandals, combined with public disillusionment and negative media coverage, have contributed to a drastic decline in religious vocations.
This is the context and spur for the film, authored by Dearbhail, who cut her teeth as a young journalist reporting on the clerical and institutional abuse scandals.
In a society where “the nuns” once ran practically every element of our education, healthcare and social services, she asks herself if she is ready to look at their contribution in the round?
Dearbhail starts her journey in her home town of Newry where she spent 14 years at two local schools run by the Order of St Clare, meeting with Sr Julie McGoldrick, her former teacher, who is now Mother Abbess of the Sisters of St Clare’s in Ireland.
As she makes her way around the country meeting a combination of religious and academics, she gains a deeper insight into the circumstances in which nuns and sisters came to be so firmly embedded in the lives of towns and villages – in Ireland as well as abroad.
However, nuns were also linked to the Church related scandals which emerged in the 1990s and 2000s and this is the legacy which Dearbhail struggles with.
Speaking on camera for the first time, several sisters tell their side of those controversies – their shock and dismay at learning about these scandals, the challenges to their own faith and how they have had to deal with negative perceptions of their legacy to Irish society. Some sisters feel that religious life is at an end whilst others are convinced there will always be a place for nuns in Irish society.
“I have spent a significant part of my own vocation as a journalist criticising ‘the nuns’ and the Catholic Church’s once powerful hold over Irish society”, said McDonald. “But this is a way of life could be gone in 10 or 15 years’ time.
“This journey forced me to revise many of my own prejudices about women in religious life. We cannot avoid our shared history, but we do need to find ways to navigate the complicated relationships between Church and State in the future. Exploring the lives of ‘the nuns’ has helped me reflect on the need for those important conversations.”
The Last Nuns in Ireland is a Scratch Films production for RTÉ made with the support from the Sound & Vision Fund of Coimisiún na Meán.
