St. Mary's Abbey, Glencairn

Saint Mary's Abbey, Glencairn is a monastic community of nuns located in Glencairn, County Waterford, in Ireland. The community belongs to the Trappist branch of the Cistercian order, thus the nuns are also referred to as Trappistines. The original community of this monastic tradition had been welcomed to Ireland by St. Malachy in 1142. The monastery was founded in 1932 by nuns of Holy Cross Abbey—located at that time in Stapehill, Dorset, England—which itself had been founded in 1802 by a small group of refugee nuns from France, led by a nun who had been imprisoned in the Bastille during the French Revolution, and narrowly escaped being sent to the guillotine.[1] The land for the St Marys Abbey, had been bought for them by the Cistercian Mount Melleray Abbey.[2] The monks from Mount Melleray used to operate the farm.

This community was the first house of Cistercian nuns to be founded in Ireland since the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII (1536–41). To date it remains the only Cistercian community of nuns in Ireland. It went on to found Mount Saint Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts, in 1949, the first community of Cistercian nuns in the United States; and St Justina's monastery, Abakaliki, Nigeria in 1982.[3]

In 2014 the abbey featured in the RTE Would you Believe, documentary, School of Love.[4][5]

The community consists of 29 nuns, who support themselves in standard Cistercian practice through the farming of their 200-acre farm,[6] the baking of altar breads and providing greeting and spiritual cards for all occasions, both printed and handcrafted.[3]

There is a graveyard at the abbey, where a number of nuns have been buried.[7]

Superior / Abbess

In 2019 Sr. Marie Fahey was re-elected abbess, for her fourth six-year term.

  • Sr Maura Mary Perry — Superior - 1932 – 31/01/1935 — Abbess — 31/01/1935 – 15/10/1935[8]
  • Sr Gertrude Purcell — Abbess — 05/11/1935 – 05/11/1944
  • Sr Margaret Shaw — Abbess — 05/11/1944 – 05/11/1950
  • Sr Gertrude Purcell (2) — Abbess — 05/11/1950 – 22/07/1955
  • Sr Agnes Fahey — Sup. ad nutum — 22/07/1955 – 31/10/1958
  • Sr Margaret Shaw (2) — Abbess — 31/10/1958 – 27/03/1965
  • Sr Imelda Power — Abbess — 31/05/1965 – 31/05/1983
  • Sr Dominic Lee — Abbess — 31/05/1983 – 31/05/1995
  • Sr Agnes O’Shea — Abbess — 31/05/1995 – 31/05/2001
  • Sr Marie Fahey OCSO[9] - Abbess - 2001 - present

References
  1. Website of the Trappist Order
  2. Sisters are doing it for themselves: Meet Waterford's farming nuns by Claire McCormack, Farming Independent, www.independent.ie, 13 June 2017.
  3. Website of the Abbey
  4. School of lOve a Would you Believe Special RTE, 20 April 2014.
  5. School of Love - Would you Believe(RTE) Glencairn Abbey Youtube Channel.
  6. A Year in the Life of Glencairn Abbey Favourite Books of the Year, Valerie O'Sullivan, Irish Times, 25 December 2017.
  7. St Marys Abbey Glencairn Cemetery Find a Grave.
  8. Glencairn Ordre Cistercien de la Stricte Observance: OCSO
  9. The nuns story what life is really like in our only womens monastery by Arlene Harris, Irish Independent, 27 April 2014.
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