“The role of women in Irish society has perhaps never been so important as it is today for our spiritual growth and for the health of our families. Nor have women’s expectations been so great”: so said Archbishop Sean Brady of Armagh, in his homily during the mass to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the foundation of St Vincent’s Secondary School in Dundalk on Wednesday, 12 November. Recalling the school’s founder, Catherine McCauley, and the dedication of the Sisters of Mercy who “for 150 years have taught countless young women, enabling them to win their rightful place in society, and have as a consequence shaped and modelled also the lives of their husbands and children”, the archbishop pointed out that today “women are called to steer a middle course between their many family and professional commitments, torn between the needs of their children and those of their employers. The young women who leave this school today have rights and responsibilities inconceivable for the girls who took their school-leaving certificates 150 years ago. In those days recalled Brady women didn’t even have the right to vote in Ireland; today the country already has its second woman President [Mary McAlee]”. The whole of Irish society, according to the archbishop of Armagh, owes an immense “debt” to the Sisters of Mercy: “If Ireland today is, in some sense, a prosperous nation that occupies its rightful place in the world”, that “is in part due to the self-dedication of the Sisters of Mercy, as also of other religious congregations. It would be a betrayal of truth and of justice concluded Archbishop Brady to forget their excellent work”
