The Path of Mercy

Breaking new ground in presenting the life of Catherine McAuley (1778?-1841), the Dublin woman who founded the Sisters of Mercy, Mary C. Sullivan has written the first full-length, documented narrative of McAuley in more than fifty years. This work places McAuley in her Irish context, particularly in post-penal Dublin, where the destitution, epidemics, and lack of basic education, especially of poor women and young girls, led her to a life of practical mercifulness.

Using extensive primary sources and questioning aspects of earlier accounts, The Path of Mercy illumines Catherine's personality and details her life. It recounts her efforts, using her inheritance from her foster parents, to address the poverties of Irish people in her time. Together with those who eventually joined her when she founded the Sisters of Mercy in 1831, she sheltered homeless women, taught them employable skills, opened a school for the daughters of the very poor, and visited the sick and dying in the slums of Dublin. Later she founded the same works of mercy in nine other towns in Ireland, and in two cities in England.

An intelligent, courageous, humorous woman, she was, even when exhausted by the rigors of her travel and ministries, always moved to "get up again," as she said, for the sake of those in need. She wrote poems and letters to novices and others, urged the community to "dance every evening," and never wished to be called "Reverend Mother." At age sixty-three she died of tuberculosis in the Baggot Street convent. During the past 180 years more than 55,000 Sisters of Mercy have served among the poor and needy throughout the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mary C. Sullivan, R.S.M., is professor emerita of language and literature, and dean emerita of the College of Liberal Arts, at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of numerous works, including The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 (CUA Press) and Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"Mary Sullivan has an unparalleled knowledge of her subject and a clear understanding of Catherine McAuley's context. This book will be an important contribution to the growing literature on Catholic Ireland in the nineteenth century."--Daire Keogh, St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra

"Sullivan's skills in reconstructing a life shine when she assesses the forces, inspirations and challenges that shaped Catherine's spiritual life. Described in particularly beautiful prose is one of the animating influences of Catherine's spirituality: her belief in 'human acceptance of one's portion of the Holy Cross'" - America Magazine