The acclaimed 2017 documentary Making the Grade explored the relationship between pupils and piano teachers in different settings across Ireland.
Sr Karol O’Connell OSB of Kylemore Abbey, Co. Galway, featured with two of her pupils, brothers James and Myles Ruddy.
When one of the brothers commented on his teacher’s “costume”, the Benedictine nun gently reproved him.
“It’s a habit, not a costume. I’m not dressing up for fancy dress!”
As if to underscore Sr
Karol’s dedication to her Benedictine calling, she was elected the
twentieth abbess of Kylemore Abbey in September.
The abbatial blessing of the 67-year-old native of Midleton, Co Cork, took place on 5 November.
Over her 12-year term of office the community will find their feet in a new €10-million purpose-built monastery. The sisters ran one of Ireland’s most prestigious boarding schools between 1920 and 2010, when it had to close.
But Kylemore continues to be one of Ireland’s foremost visitor attractions, employing as many as 150 people locally.
Since 2015, the abbey has partnered with the University of Notre Dame to
hold academic programmes at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish
Studies.
On 11 July, the feast of St Benedict, the nuns moved into their new monastery and on 17 August, the feast of Our Lady of Knock, it was officially opened.
As he formally blessed the new monastery in the presence of local civic and religious dignitaries, Archbishop of Tuam Francis Duffy admired Kylemore’s enchanting location amid Connemara’s mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes.
The natural beauty surrounding the abbey provides a natural enclosure for the community, he noted, saying that their “long-awaited new home” is “a new start in new surrounds, located in familiar territory”.
But Archbishop
Duffy also underlined how in the midst of the innovation and enterprise
there was also continuity and stability.
Abbess Karol will preside over a community of 15 sisters, including a Chinese nun, a Filipina and a German, as well as three young Indian sisters who are part of an exchange project called the Mustard Seed.
This is an initiative begun by the previous abbess, Sr Máire Hickey, which will see three sets of three nuns over a nine-year period come to Kylemore from India to learn about Benedictine spirituality in an Irish setting. “They are a huge help to us, and they love it here,” Sr Máire told me.
In the new monastery there is a dedicated novitiate space for the first time in nearly 20 years. According to Sr Karol, “There are people coming and looking; seekers, inquisitive about monastic life.” They will now be able to come and search more deeply.
Any visiting seekers will
detect Sr Karol’s love for the place. “Everybody should live in
Kylemore; it is what T.S. Eliot calls, ‘The still point of the turning
world.’” Her spirituality would seem to be one of finding God in all
things. “No matter what I am doing – I could be feeding the horses, or I
could be teaching piano – it is all praising God, every single thing.”
Before
moving into the new building, the community had been living in a small
farmhouse on the grounds of the abbey after leaving Kylemore Castle in
2007. Their temporary accommodation meant they were “living on top of
each other”, according to Sr Karol. The lack of space meant it was
difficult to do things like have a procession, and it was hard to foster
the silence that is central to their lives. Now they will be able to
host retreats and small conferences.
It is a “new chapter in a timeless story” that has been unfolding for more than 350 years since the “Irish Dames of Ypres” began their foundation, the Abbey of Our Lady of Grace, in 1665 in the Belgium town. There they educated the daughters of wealthy Irish families until 1914 when the First World War forced them to flee to the safety of England and later Ireland.
According to 86-year-old Sr Máire, some of the nuns kept diaries as they
packed up amid the shelling and the approach of the Germans. “We still
have some of those diaries. The cellarer recorded how they left the
monastery and stayed in a nearby village. She returned to the monastery
one last time and stood looking at the damaged abbey buildings as shells
dropped all around. She wondered how they would find the money to
restore it if they were ever able to return. As things turned out, they
never came back – they lost all their property in Belgium. They were
homeless.”
The catastrophe of 1914 puts the troubles of the Covid pandemic in context. Long site closures and rising building costs delayed the sisters’ long-held dream of opening the new monastery to coincide with their centenary at Kylemore in December 2020.
At one stage, according to Sr Máire, they thought they were going to have to abandon the project. But Kylemore has weathered such storms before.
Sr
Máire explained that Kylemore came close to shutting down due to a
financial crisis in the 1930s and when the boarding school closed in
2010. Though she is reluctant to admit it, Sr Máire is credited with
spearheading the innovative rethinking that rejuvenated Kylemore’s
fortunes.
Sr Karol hopes the brisk tourist trade and the abbey’s generous benefactors will look after the outstanding bills.
“We never have enough money – we are always looking for money, but it is not our main thing. Our main thing is prayer and the monastic life.”
Sr Máire agrees. “The centre of our lives is the Catholic liturgy – Mass every day and the prayer of the Church.”
So even though the new
monastery will be open to people of all faiths to stay and take time for
contemplation, the Benedictines will not be diluting their own
structured prayer life, “because that is our heritage and it has proved
good for us”, Sr Máire says.
“Music is very important in the life of a Benedictine because most of our divine office is sung, and we would be great custodians of Gregorian Chant,” Sr Karol says.
Though a small community they have the benefit of an abbess who studied music at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and has more than 40 years’ experience of teaching. She gives regular courses for teachers on the Kodály concept, a music education philosophy based on the ideas of the Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, on which she has written eight books.
Since she entered the monastery in 1978 she has been the community organist and choir mistress, as well as cook, gardener and prioress.
One of the standout
moments at the opening celebration was when the nuns sang the
Kylemore Magnificat by Patrick Cassidy, specially commissioned for the
day. It was ethereal.
Another memorable note was when Archbishop Duffy told the nuns that their mission is to “live in community, sharing your liturgy and hospitality with all, in a spirit of peace in and for the world”.
The opening of a new monastery was a “very rare event in Ireland and perhaps in Western Europe” but despite the “contraction of the visible elements of Church all around”, it is “evidence of hope for the future of faith”.
Floreat.