Holy Faith presence and past in Kilcoole
THE HOLY FAITH NUNS FIRST SET UP SHOP IN KILCOOLE IN 1897. THE CONVENT WAS SOLD EARLIER THIS YEAR BUT REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF DISCOVERED THAT THE ORDER IS STILL ACTIVE, UNDER THE GUISE OF THE LUISNE CENTRE
IT’S a wonderful house but it is cold!’
Welcome to Luisne, or the Luisne Centre for Spirituality in Kilcoole where the search for meaningful faith in today’s increasingly materialistic world is pursued.
The house is an elegant Georgian construction situated a short walk from the village of Kilcoole, set back from the road behind the modern primary school and parish church. The door is opened by Sister Miriam of the Holy Faith order of nuns, who have been present here for more than a century and whose ties to this place remain stubbornly strong.
That she is still here may come as a surprise to some as the order decided to close the house as a convent and appeared set to break the long standing link between the sisters and Kilcoole.
However, though the building is now owned by private investors, operating the centre allows her to stay in these familiar surroundings and continue to bear her thoughtful witness.
The opener of the door gives a potted history of the Holy Faith congregation, which was founded as long ago as 1876 in Dublin where a lady called Margaret Aylward was horrified at the conditions being endured by poverty stricken families.
The Waterford native was especially concerned that children were being subverted from their Roman Catholic faith by Protestant schools which offered food as well as lessons to their pupils.
She set up her own schools around the city and also established an orphanage, operated in the heartfelt belief that every child deserved a home.
That same belief led her to become a pioneer of fostering, finding families prepared to welcome her orphans into their homes.
The fostering was concentrated in a number of centres, notably Rosbercon in New Ross, Mullinavat in County Kilkenny and, yes, Kilcoole.
With the fostering came a school. And with the school came the nuns. And with the nuns came the requirement for a convent in which they could reside.
The Holy Faith set up shop in their County Wicklow base back in 1897, the start of a commitment to Kilcoole which endured for 120 years.
The school – named in honour of Saint Brigid - was first and foremost intended to offer education to the offspring of poor families.
Music and singing were encouraged as good for the spirit, while practical instruction in handcrafts and cookery was also prominent in the original curriculum.
A boarding school was opened too, with ten boys on the roll, and the fees paid by the families of the boarders helped to finance the whole operation. So it was that all the children were at least given milk at lunchtimes, though they were still expected to bring a sod of turf each day for the school fire.
Accommodation for the Holy Faith teachers was found in the grand house built as a country retreat by one time Lord Mayor of Dublin John Darragh in the 1780s.
Darragh and his wife Mary had no surviving children. Their seaside home passed into the possession of the Newton family before eventually being incarnated as the convent.
The house came with a small farm, which some of the sisters tended. By the time Sister Miriam was recruited, it was used not only as accommodation for the nuns who worked in Kilcoole as teachers but also as a holiday centre.
Miriam came to the order through her own
THE DECISION TO SELL THIS PLACE WAS NOT AN EASY ONE TO TAKE. MOST OF THE SISTERS ARE QUITE NOSTALGIC ABOUT KILCOOLE CONVENT.
education in Holy Faith
Clontarf, one of the schools run in the capital – others included Haddington Road and the ‘mother house’ in Glasnevin.
‘We came on holidays – in a bus,’ she now recalls, harking back to the time when she was one of 40 novice nuns. ‘We used to sleep in the old school and walk the Mass path to the church in Kilquade.’
As a schoolgirl, she found that she had a vocation and she paid close attention when various religious orders came to Clontarf recruiting.
She felt that she would like to go on the missions to Africa – but things turned out very differently.
The Holy Faith had extended abroad to New Zealand, to the United States and to Trinidad in the West Indies. When she entered the order in 1957, she effectively recognised that Africa was now off the agenda.
Still she harboured thoughts of being sent to Trinidad as the next best thing. Instead, after three years of training at the mother house in Glasnevin and those happy vacations in Kilcoole, she was dispatched to California.
Rather than spreading Christianity under a palm tree beside the Caribbean, she was pitched into a hotbed of the emerging hippie culture.
She ended up at a school called Tiburon in San Francisco and could see the Golden Gate bridge from her home in the convent.
‘We enjoyed a million dollar view for nothing!’ she laughs at the recollection. She worked as principal in Tiburon for six years and then called time on her stint in America, where she passed 22 constructive years.
She wanted home, exchanging sunny California for a secondary school in Finglas.
It may have been a cement desert by comparison with Tiburon but she was happy to be ‘close to the pulse of life’.
The students in her maths and religion classes on the Northside were great but she had not quite finished with the US, as it turned out.
Sister Miriam went on sabbatical to the Sophia Centre in Oakland, once more in California, 14 years ago. It proved to be the first step on the road leading back to Kilcoole as she emerged from the trip with a different – and very inclusive - concept of God.
Retiring soon afterwards from full-time teaching, she leaned towards a less Jesuitical and more Franciscan grasp of Christianity.
She took a Master’s degree in spirituality at All Hallows in Drumcondra which confirmed her in the view that emphasising the differences in various creeds does not make sense.
‘We all come from the same origins and we are all related,’ is her all-embracing view of humanity. ‘All spiritual faiths lead to God.’
With this less partisan outlook, she arrived in Kilcoole where the convent was still very much a live community, though the number of nuns was steadily dwindling and none of the teachers in the primary school was a nun.
She came determined to spread the new word, starting classes which signalled that a new entity had been born – the Luisne centre for spirituality.
Luisne? The word is Irish and it means the first blush of light at dawn, in this case a dawn that heralds a new awakening.
The initial session were conducted in the school but the obvious home for the centre was up the driveway in the big old house.
Word of the centre has spread and the brochure proclaims that more than 6,000 people have attended various courses held under the Luisne umbrella since the year 2010.
Though demand for spiritual healing, guidance and sharing has increased over the years, the viability of the convent was sagging.
Sister Miriam found herself alone for three months at one stage in the vast building where she once enjoyed in the company of scores of fellow novices.
‘Our numbers now are so small - and I am considered young at the age of 77,’ she remarks ruefully, while remaining convinced that the Holy Faith retains energy enough to make a difference to the world.
The entire place was sold this year and the order formally moved out in September - but Miriam is back and the Luisne light continues to burn in the house
Her colleague Sister Barbara has moved to Newtownmountkennedy and Miriam has found accommodation in Greystones.
However, she returns to Kilcoole daily, opening the door to those who come for the Zen style meditation sessions and plotting the forthcoming Luisne programme for 2018.
‘The decision to sell was not an easy one to take. Most of the sisters are quite nostalgic about Kilcoole convent.
‘Miraculously, the new owners want the spirituality to continue,’ she explains. ‘We got the keys. So I am free to come and go as I please.’
She wonders aloud whether there is any long term future for traditional orders such as the one which has given her so many opportunities. She acknowledges that traditional Roman Catholics (to name but a few) may find her views on organised religion in general to be suspect. She is happy to explore the meaning of life with Hindoo, Muslim or Jew in search of inner wisdom, new rituals and a shared plan to save planet Earth. The chapel in the house is adorned not only with crosses but also the symbols on many other faiths.
‘Luisne has a healing atmosphere, an energy.’ She wonders whether this is because so many Holy Faith sisters have been here over the past 120 years.
Now a new tradition is being built up in this old place.