Loreto nun Sr Cyril Mooney, an ‘incredible’ educational campaigner, dies aged 86

Irish Loreto nun Sr Cyril Mooney (86), who was recognised internationally for her work in the provision of education in India, has died in Kolkata after a long illness.

From Bray, Co Wicklow, she served in India from 1956 and, on becoming principal of Loreto Day School at Sealdah, Kolkata in 1979, she expanded access to what previously had been a private school for middle-class girls to include street children and others from disadvantaged lower-caste backgrounds. Soon, of the 1,400 students at the school, 50 per cent did not pay fees.

As she told The Irish Times in 2015 “we mandated ourselves that we would take 25 per cent of poor children every time we did admissions, and over time this moved up to 50 per cent. To help street children keep up their attendance, accommodation was provided on site, in a model that has been copied by the West Bengal government”.

It was the case that “in some schools `lower-caste’ children are not allowed to turn on the tap or touch utensils and must ask their higher caste peers for a drink of water. Or they are made to sit at the back of the class, with inevitable results,” she said. She also set up a home at the school for upwards of 200 street children who had no family.

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When it came to her model for inclusive schooling, she recalled how “the [Indian] government said if the Loretos can do it, we can do it.” Since 2010 the 25 per cent quota for disadvantaged students, which she began in Kalkata, is compulsory for all private schools in India’s under its Right to Education Act. It guarantees free and compulsory education to all children aged three to 14.

Another project Sr Mooney began in India was a system that has trained over 10,000 teachers to care, specifically, for children in rural towns with few educational options. She also oversaw the Bhalobasha project, which offers housing for older people in need, microcredit programmes, and human rights education initiatives.

In 2007 she was awarded the Padma Shri Award by the Indian government, one of that country’s highest civilian honours and in 2013 President Michael D Higgins presented her with a distinguished service award, one of Ireland’s highest awards.

In 2015, when she spoke to this newspaper, she was on a short visit home to Bray having picked up an honorary degree at Vermont, in the US. It was her fourth such degree – the others being from universities in Ireland (Trinity College in 2010), the UK and India – in addition to the PhD in Zoology for which she had studied in India.

Sr Orla Treacy (50), a Loreto nun also from Bray, who built and is director of a primary and secondary school, as well as a healthcare centre, at Rumbek in South Sudan, described Sr Mooney as “an incredible missionary. She opened her school doors to the street children in Kolkata and inspired other schools to do the same. She challenged us as Loreto Sisters to serve the poorest of the poor in our schools.”

Sr Treacy first came across Sr Mooney herself as a student at Loreto, Bray, and then worked with her briefly at the school in Kolkata. “She arrived early every morning on her moped and left late every evening, committed to her mission. As a young Loreto sister I returned for a few weeks to work with Sr Cyril in 2004. From that visit I was inspired to consider a missionary vocation.”

In her own work Sr Treacy said that “as a missionary in South Sudan elements of her model for education have helped us to shape our programmes. Her desire to upgrade local teachers has inspired us to go to our local villages to support the teachers. And her model of training the students to become teachers is very much alive.” Sr Cyril Mooney’s “selflessness benefited the lives of countless children in India and beyond, and inspired many more,” she said.

Sr Mooney’s funeral takes place at St Thomas’s Church, Kolkata, on Tuesday where Mother Teresa lay in state for a week before her funeral in September 1997.