History
The religious institute began when McAuley used an inherited fortune to build a "House of Mercy" in Dublin that provided educational, religious, and social services for poor women and children. The House aroused local opposition, however, it being traditional for nuns rather than lay women to engage in this sort of activity. Eventually the church hierarchy agreed to the formation of a non-cloistered institute, and the sisters became known informally as the "walking nuns" for their ability to care for the poor outside a convent. The house still sits today, as the Mercy International Centre.
In the year of 1992, the leaders of the various congregations created the Mercy International Association to foster collaboration and cooperation. The purpose of the Association is to provide support and foster collaboration, organisation and inspiration for the ministries of Sisters of Mercy and their associates.
On 12 December 2011, the 15 independent congregations in Australia and Papua New Guinea of the Sisters of Mercy combined to form a single congregation numbering circa 900 sisters.
Read more about this topic: Sisters Of Mercy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)