Rosemount
by an early MMM author c.1987 Ireland 23.05.2022
This is the story of a house, a very special house for the Medical Missionaries of Mary. A house whose name is heard far and wide. “Rosemount” was the first home in Ireland for Mother Mary Martin and her young Congregation when they started in 1937. It has been ‘home’ for many Sisters over the last fifty years. Daily they set out to hospitals, university and other places of ‘learning’ preparing for their future missionary work.One of the first to enter the Congregation tells her story. The O’ Sullivan family lived nearby on Cross Ave.
“Early in 1939 our doorbell rang late one afternoon. I opened it to the unexpected caller. A delicate woman in a grey veil and wearing a grey coat with a cape stood at the door. She looked as though she were a children’s nurse. I had noticed her in the area over the previous months, but oddly never accompanied by a child or a pram …” Little did Maureen know that soon she was to be a child in the Rosemount ‘cradle’. Later to join the flow of MMM’s to Africa and other missionary countries.
The story of the Medical Missionaries of Mary spread to Drogheda and elsewhere and is a story of rapid expansion during the years from 1937 up to now. Fifty years of dedicated service in eight countries of Africa; Brazil in South America and among the North American houses is a mission in the coal mining area of Cissy Speck fame. In overcrowded slums of third world cities the Sisters meet basic needs like water; hearing people plead for a quality of life that true healing brings. Others stay alongside beds awaiting the birth of a baby or simply being with an ill patient. In other places Sisters rise at dawn, load a land rover and go to local villages with basic health care.
Some may ask where Rosemount is? To them we say you’re welcome ‘to come and see’; others will know where on Booterstown Avenue, Dublin. The women in grey turn into Rosemount Terrace. Welcome!
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