Irish Newfoundlanders - Irish Catholic Religious Orders

Irish Catholic Religious Orders

As the permanent population, and the numbers of young people and children in Newfoundland increased during the early 19th century, public interest in access to education also grew. Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming understood both the parental aspirations for education, and the religious opportunities that it presented. He was determined to provide "cradle-to-grave" cultural institutions for Irish Roman Catholics and in particular, wanted to address the needs and aspirations of working class Catholics. He actively recruited religious orders of women from Ireland to deliver the educational and religious program for the Church.

In March 1833, Bishop Fleming went to Galway, Ireland, where he sought several sisters of the order of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to come to Newfoundland and open a school for female children. Several years later while the Presentation sisters had a considerable influence on the Irish community in St. John's, Fleming desired to extend Catholic education further. In 1839, he decided to invite a second order of religious Irish women to Newfoundland, the Sisters of Mercy. Together, the work of the Presentation sisters and the Sisters of Mercy became the centrepiece of Catholic education in Newfoundland for the next century and a half, and a cornerstone of the denominational education system. Their skills and talents were recognized by all denominations, and over the next century they and their convents were sought out by parents of all denominations as centres of excellence in the arts, learning, and particularly, music.

In the 1847, Bishop Fleming recruited four brothers of the order of Irish Christian Brothers, a lay religious order founded in Waterford by the merchant Edmund Rice, to come to Newfoundland to teach at the Benevolent Irish Society's school.