The Sisters of Mercy have handed over one of their longest-standing healthcare institutions, Our Lady's Manor nursing home in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, to its new owners. A Mass was celebrated to mark the nuns’ departure after a presence in the town lasting over a century, and after more than fifty years of providing care for the sick and elderly.
Earlier this year, the order announced that Our Lady's Manor Nursing Home was to be going to be leased by the Quality Nursing Homes which already operate nursing homes in Multyfarnham and Mullingar.
Sr Breege Donohoe of the Mercy Order recalled the long association of her congregation with Edgeworthstown going back to 1899 when it opened a convent.
Sr Donohoe said Our Lady's had “a long tradition of caring” from the day it opened in and 1952 to the present day and had been “a place of comfort and welcome where nursing care and the spiritual and physical well being of the residents is a priority”.
“As we, the Sisters of Mercy move out of Our Lady's Nursing home, we give thanks to God for the care that it has provided over these years,” she continued.
“We remember the service of all those who have worked to make the Manor what it is today, a place where those who are sick experience the loving kindness of God through the caring profession.”
Her colleague Sr Elizabeth Manning, Provincial of the Sisters of Mercy, Western Province, said her order felt sadness at “letting go of a place that has meant so much to us, as to the people it served”.
For sixty years, she said, the nuns had put their hearts and souls into Our Lady’s Manor.
The bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, Dr Colm O'Reilly, who celebrated the Mass said that the withdrawal of the Sisters from the management of Our Lady's Manor and their replacement by lay people experienced in running such facilities was “a sign of the times, in a positive way”.
“It is a replacement of a long standing and well tested system built on foundations well laid by something new and no less trustworthy”.
“It says, among other things, that the special gift of Catherine McAuley lived by her communities of Sisters of Mercy is well rooted and can live on in a new way in these times”.
The bishop said that while one always regretted the end of an era but equally rejoiced in a new beginning.
Edgeworthstown Manor was the family home of writer Maria Edgeworth, author of the famous novel ‘Castle Rackrent, and whose family was granted a six hundred acre estate there in 1619.
Another family member, Henry Essex Edgeworth, Abbé de Firmont was a priest to King Louis XVI of France and Roger Edgeworth was commissioned by King Henry VII of England in the 17th century to draw up a declaration of the Christian Doctrine called "Book of Sermons".
In 1935 the demesne was sold to Bernard Noonan, a native of Edgeworthstown living in the United States, who donated it four years later the local bishop for the benefit of a religious community.
The bishop gave the property to the Sisters of Mercy in Longford, who already had a convent in Edgeworthstown and after World War II, the nuns opened a school in the town.
They developed the Manor Nursing Home and stables into living quarters, classrooms and a small oratory.
The nuns’ nursing home opened in March 1952, catering for elderly and infirm people and for mothers giving birth.
The complex was extended in 1971 and the order decided to concentrate on the care of the elderly and close their maternity unit.
In 1982, a further extension was opened with a new chapel, sacristy, mortuary and dining-room and a decade later, a conservatory was added.
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(Source: CIN)