Cork-born founder of Sisters of Charity declared Venerable by Pope

Mother Mary Aikenhead, founder of the Sisters of Charity, has been declared ‘Venerable’ by Pope Francis.

It is the second of the four steps to sainthood in the Catholic tradition. Those include declaration as a Servant of God, followed by the declaration of Venerable, then Blessed and finally canonisation as a saint.

Mary Aikenhead was given the title Servant of God in 1921, meaning she was then being considered as a candidate for canonisation.

She was born in Cork in 1787. Her father Dr David Aikenhead was an apothecary (pharmacist) and member of the Church of Ireland while her mother Mary Stackpole was from a well-off Catholic family. Mary was fostered to a poor Catholic couple John and Mary Rourke until she was six, when the Rourkes came to live with her parents as servants.

In 1802, Mary became a Catholic thanks to the influence of one of her aunts, and she joined a group of women who set up centres for the distribution of food and clothing. She became convinced she had a vocation of service to the poor. She helped set up an orphanage at Dublin’s North William Street in 1815 and sought permission from Rome to establish a new order of nuns with a vow of service to the poor.

This was granted in 1816 when the Religious Sisters of Charity was set up. Its nuns became the first to visit prisoners in Kilmainham jail. She opened her first Catholic school for poor children at Dublin’s Gardiner St in 1830 and founded St Vincent’s Hospital in 1834, the first hospital in Ireland run by women for patients of all creeds and where doctors and nurses could receive training.

Mary Aikenhead died in 1858.

Today, there are more than 400 Sisters of Charity in Ireland, England, Scotland, Zambia, California, Nigeria and Malawi – and 145 in Australia.