Sisters of Mercy

Sisters of Mercy, (R.S.M.), Roman Catholic religious congregation founded in Dublin in 1831 by Catherine Elizabeth McAuley. The congregation’s members are often known simply as Mercy Sisters. The order grew quickly, establishing communities that offer social services and operate schools, hospitals, and other institutions throughout the world.

Mother McAuley

McAuley worked as a live-in companion and housekeeper to an older non-Catholic couple for nearly 20 years. She inherited the bulk of the couple’s estate in 1822. A devout Catholic interested in serving those in need, she developed a program for instructing and training poor girls and women and performing other works of mercy. In 1827, assisted mainly by wealthy women attracted to the religious life, she opened a center for charitable works on Baggot Street in Dublin, calling it the House of Mercy because it opened on the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy (September 24). Initially, she had not intended to become a nun or to found a religious congregation. Indeed, the House of Mercy attracted criticism from laypeople and clergy who supported other local female orders and viewed McAuley’s work as competing with that of other congregations. At the insistence of the archbishop of Dublin, however, she embraced the religious life. With two other women, she pronounced the simple vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1831, forming the Sisters of Mercy. The order’s rule and constitution received papal approval from Gregory XVI in 1841.

Growth of the congregation

The growth and diffusion of the congregation throughout the English-speaking world was rapid. By the time of McAuley’s death in 1841, nearly 15 communities had formed in Ireland and England. The first North American community formed in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1842. One year later the first Mercy Sisters convent in the United States was founded in Pittsburgh. In the 21st century, Mercy Sisters communities and their ministries are also found in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, Guatemala, Argentina, and Peru, among others. The congregation is not governed centrally, although many groups of convents have merged to form a single congregation with joint committees and collaborative ministries in different locations.

In addition to simple vows, Mercy Sisters take a fourth vow of service. The order engages in a wide range of apostolic works, including education, the care of the sick in their homes and in hospitals, the care of older adults and of orphans, and other forms of social service. In the United States alone the Sisters of Mercy operate numerous colleges and many high schools, grammar schools, and hospitals.

In 1978 the cause was opened for Catherine McAuley’s canonization as a saint, and in 1990 she was declared “Venerable” by Pope John Paul II.

Abuse allegations and the Magdalene laundries

In the early 21st century the Sisters of Mercy attracted notoriety for allegations of child abuse in Irish schools and orphanages that were run by the order. In 2009, after the release of a government report on abuse committed by several religious orders from the 19th to the late 20th century, the Sisters of Mercy offered to pay €128 million in cash and property transfers to victims. The order was also criticized for its role in the operation of two Magdalene laundries in Ireland (specifically, in Galway and Dún Laoghaire) in the 19th and 20th centuries. The two laundries were part of a network of religious-run Irish institutions in which young women and girls worked unpaid in menial jobs as penance for having violated various social mores. In 2013, in response to a government report investigating the Irish state’s involvement in the laundries, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy released a statement that expressed, in part:

We fully acknowledge and are saddened by the limitations of the care which could be provided in these Homes. Their institutional setting was far removed from the response considered appropriate to such needs today. We wish that we could have done more and that it could have been different. It is regrettable that the Magdalene Homes had to exist at all.