Margaret Anna Cusack - "Nun of Kenmare"

"Nun of Kenmare"

During her stay at Kenmare she dedicated herself to her writings, which ranged from biographies of saints to pamphlets on social issues.

By 1870, more than 200,000 copies of her works had circulated throughout the world. The money made from her publications went towards the Great Irish Famine and helping to feed the poor. Her success in helping the poor and her outspokenness made her a topic of interest for the government and the Church of England. Her next endeavour was to found another convent.

Motivated by the sudden death of her fiancé, Charles Holmes, she joined a convent of Puseyite Anglican nuns. However, disappointed at not been sent to the Crimea she converted to Roman Catholicism and joined the Order of St. Clare (also known as the Poor Clares), a community of Franciscan nuns that taught poor girls. In 1861, she was sent with a small group of nuns to Kenmare, County Kerry, then one of the most destitute parts of Ireland, to establish a convent of Poor Clares.

She fought for her own personal rights and for Irish patriots, but made no demands for women's rights in general, was opposed to co-education and is thought to have believed academic degrees were wasted on women.

She wrote 35 books, including many popular pious and sentimental texts on private devotions (A Nun's Advice to her Girls), poems, Irish history and biography, founding Kenmare Publications, through which 200,000 volumes of her works were issued in less than ten years. She kept two full-time secretaries occupied for correspondence and wrote letters on Irish causes in the Irish, American, and Canadian press.

In the famine year of 1871, she raised and distributed £15,000 in a Famine Relief Fund. She publicly railed against landlords of the region, particularly Lord Lansdowne who owned the lands around Kenmare, and his local agent. She was an outspoken Irish patriot, publishing The Patriot's History of Ireland, in 1869, though she later denied being associated with the Ladies' Land League. In 1872 she issued an account of the life of Daniel O'Connell, The Liberator: His Life and Times, Political, Social, and Religious.

She was unpopular with some Catholics, but seems to have enjoyed, from the beginning, the sympathy of most of the leading Catholics, lay and clerical, in Ireland. Predictably perhaps, because of her increasing political and social interest outside the convent, life became intolerable and she left the Kenmore Poor Clares in November 1881. After leaving the convent, she began to establish shelters and vocational schools for female emigrants to the U.S. and supported herself through her lectures and writings.

Her transfer orders were for her to return to Newry, but she was determined to erect a convent in Knock, County Mayo where she had gone to live. After pressuring Archbishop McEvilly of Tuam, she finally received permission to establish a convent in Knock. However, the archbishop wanted her to establish a community of Poor Clares whilst she intended to found an entirely new community called the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Deadlock ensued, and Mother Margaret was finally invited to establish the new religious congregation in the Diocese of Nottingham; so she left Ireland for good in 1884.

In 1885, Bishop Bagshawe of Nottingham sent Margaret to the US in order to raise money for her foundation as well as to promote her work. Whilst in the US, she was invited to establish a community in the Diocese of Newark.