The haunting Latin verse, Salve Regina, filled the still air as we
stood by the grave of Sr. Peig Rice.
Wednesday afternoon of a mid May day saw her family relations, her
community sisters and local townspeople come together to remember yet another
Sister of Mercy who had passed from us.
The remaining elderly Sisters of Mercy who once championed the cause of
education and nursed the sick and ageing in Athy stood or sat by the graveside
of their departed sister as they raised their voices to the heavens.
‘Salve, Regina, mater
misericordiae:
Vita, dulcedo, et
spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus,
exsules, filii Hevae.
Ad te suspiramus,
gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum
valle.
Eia ergo, Advocata
nostra,
illos tuos
misericordes oculos
ad nos converte.
Et Iesum,
benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis, post hos
exsilium ostende.
O clemens: O pia:
O dulcis
Virgo Maria.’
Those same words have been sung on countless occasions since the
first member of the Sisters of Mercy congregation in Athy died in 1866. She was a young postulant who had entered the
convent with her two sisters on 8th November 1865. As the new community, founded just 14 years
previously, had no cemetery she was buried in Barrowhouse graveyard. Sadly, one of her own sisters who had entered
the convent with her died a year later and she was buried in the garden of the
Sisters of Mercy convent. The remains of
the young postulant were exhumed from the Barrowhouse cemetery and placed beside
those of her sister. The two Ryan
sisters were the first burials from amongst the many Sisters of Mercy who graced
the corridors of Athy Convent of Mercy over the years.
Sister Peig Rice entered Athy’s Convent of Mercy on 23rd
September 1958. She was received during
Easter week and being proud of her Kilkenny background received the name of the
Kilkenny patron saint, St. Canice. She
later reverted to using the name Sr. Peig.
It was not very common for 23 year olds to enter convents in those days
but Peig Rice had spent some time in St. Martha’s in Navan training to be a
poultry instructress, where she enjoyed the companionship of fellow students,
some of whom attended her funeral on Wednesday.
I believe Peig may have decided to forego poultry instructing for the
more demanding and rewarding role of a nurse.
Trained in the Mater Hospital Dublin she would later spend a year in St.
Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork from where she obtained her CMB before returning to
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Athy on 1st July 1962. There she worked under the then Matron, Sr.
Dominic, whom she would replace on Sr. Dominic’s retirement in March 1981.
The Sisters of Mercy first took charge of the Workhouse Hospital in
Athy on 24th October 1873 when three sisters from the local Convent came
to live in a small building provided for them which they called St. Vincent’s. The Matron of the Union was still a lay
person, the position being held in 1873 by Miss Lindsay. When the Union Hospital became a County Home
on 1st May 1922 Sr. Angela Devereux became Matron and the entire
complex was renamed St. Vincent’s.
Following Sr. Angela’s death in 1943 Sr. Vincent Lalor was appointed
Matron, a position she held for the next 14 years. Sr. Dominic was Matron from 1957 to 1981 when
Sr. Peig Rice took over the onerous position.
Sr. Peig retired as Matron in December 1996 and involved herself in the
local Care of the Elderly Committee and in developing the Alzheimer’s unit in
the hospital.
The funeral mass for Sr. Peig was a celebration of thanksgiving for
her life, which like her sisters in religion was spent in the service of
others. I am always reminded on the
passing of a Sister of Mercy of how the teaching ministry of that Order
empowered young Irish women to take charge of their lives and gave them a new
vision of their roles in Irish society.
In the same way the caring and nursing ministry which formed a large
part of Sr. Peig’s life in the Sisters of Mercy benefitted several generations
from Athy and those parts of County Kildare served by St. Vincent’s Hospital.
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