Present Day Ministries

Hope House

Hope House is a residential treatment centre in Foxford, Co Mayo.  For more information please click here.

Convent of Mercy, Swinford, Co Mayo 1855 – 1989

Nativity Mosaic, Convent of Mercy Chapel, Swinford, Co Mayo

Education:

Convent of Mercy and Primary School in 1923

For information on the schools that were established, please click here.

Many of those who entered the convent in the early years died young.  They were as poor as the people they served.  Their diet was meagre; disease and famine rampant. A family of five Dooley sisters from Shrule, Co Galway entered in Swinford. Two died within five years of entering. The three younger ones went on the Australian mission and died there.

The first cemetery was on the little green patch between the Convent and the Parish Church.

The following Sisters are buried there.

The new cemetery around Calvary was opened in 1902. Sr. Veronica O’Connell was the first Sister buried there in 1904.

St. Anne’s Public Laundry, Swinford
St. Anne’s Public Laundry was set up in 1925. For more information, please click here.

Health Care
As soon as the Sisters arrived in Swinford (1855), they began visiting the local Workhouse. Visitation of families became a large part of our ministry in each place. It had been officially opened in 1846. There was a famine, minor to the one in 1847, that was particularly felt in the West of Ireland.  For more information, please click here.

USA
Mother Francis Warde, one of the first Mercy Sisters, and a member of the Carlow community, sought Mercy Sisters from all over Ireland to go to the United States.  For more information on the involvement of Achonry Sisters, please click here.

Bendigo, Australia

Convent of Mercy, Bendigo

Bishop Crane, an Irish Augustinian priest was Bishop of Bendigo in Australia. He made approaches to the Sisters of Mercy in Swinford to assist with providing Catholic Education. The town of Bendigo had many Irish immigrants, who had followed the Gold Rush. Their families were in need of education.

For more information on this interesting story, please click here.

Brabazon House, Swinford, Co Mayo 1916 – 1974

Brabazon Park House and land of about thirty acres was purchased from the Land Commission by the Congregation in 1916.   For more information, please click here.

Swinford Convent, the Motherhouse, opened in 1855, and was demolished in 1989. For more information, please click here.

There is still a Mercy presence in Swinford. It has been beautifully marked thus:

Monument of the torch and hands created by John O’Malley, a local artist

Plaque at bottom of monument