We cannot change our past but we can avail of its wisdom creatively, build on it and allow a better future to emerge because of it. This is what is happening at the site of a former convent on Forster Street in Galway. It has been given on a 99 year lease to COPE a refuge for victims of domestic abuse. The site was once the location of a Magdalen Laundry and now it will be a place, where women and children at risk can find a haven of safety.
John Concannon and Jacquie Horan of Cope Galway accept the keys to the former laundry building from Sr. Elizabeth Manning and Sr. Caitlin Conneely of the Sisters of Mercy.
The Magdalene Laundry that operated towards the back of this site was opened by a Ms. Lynch in 1824; a time before our foundation. The story goes that the first Sisters, who came to Galway in 1841, used to help Ms. Lynch in her ministry to destitute women. She begged them, on her deathbed, to take over the refuge she had set up. This they did in good faith, until it was closed in 1984. Through the years, the occupancy varied from over one hundred women at a time, to just eighteen, when it closed.
Life has changed considerably but one constant is the vulnerability of women. COPE provides a refuge for victims of domestic violence in the Galway area. Their current building, Waterside House, has an inadequate capacity. While they were able to accomodate 100 women and their families, their website tells us that they could not offer a place to a further 200 referrals, who had to go elsewhere for safety and support.
COPE’s Chair, John Concannon says that, “Finding a suitable property has been the absolute one priority for the Board of COPE Galway for a number of years now.” Other possibilities could not fulfill the requirements and so, he continued, “The Board joins with me in expressing our sincere gratitude to the Sisters of Mercy for donating this wonderful property.” Features that are particularly lauded are the security of the site, the fact that the Rape Crisis Centre already use part of the building and its space. It also has the potential for a playing area for children, something that would have been close to the heart of Catherine McAuley.
One last interesting note is from the book, The Mystical Imagination of Patrick Kavanagh, [Columba Press, Dublin, p. 156] by Úna Agnew SSL. In her research of the poet’s life, she discovered that one of his aunts, whom he never met, entered the Sisters of Mercy in Galway. Sister Louis Kevany spent most of her life in the convent in Forster Street, where she is reputed to have been very kind to the Magdalen women. Many of them helped her in gardening the outdoor grotto. She is buried in the grounds of the former convent. Perhaps Patrick Kavanagh’s own words from the poem Birth might speak to this new development:
And everything seemed over bar the shouting,
When out of the holy mouth came angelic grace
And the will that had fought had found new merit
And all sorts of beautiful things appeared in that place.
[Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems, Penguin Books, London, 2004, p. 219]
For further information in an article that appeared in The Irish Times (April 16, 2013) click here.
Suzanne Ryder rsm
Western Province
