Nationality: Irish
Congregational Register No: 156
D.O.B. 26.06.1908
First Profession: 09.09.1948
Died: 10.03.1981 Aged: 72 years

After many years working as a public health doctor in England, Monica, a native of Easkey, Co. Sligo, entered MMM on 7 March 1946.  As a mature entrant, it wasn’t easy for her to relinquish her smoking habit, among other things, and she did not warm to Mother Mary’s kind gesture of offering her sweets in place of the cigarettes!

She was very talented and Mother Mary was quick to appreciate her gifts, securing a dispensation (necessary in those times) for Monica’s second, active year as a novice to precede her first, canonical year so she could accompany Mother Mary to Nigeria for the making of the film Visitation.

In later years, Sr. Monica worked in Tanzania, mostly in Galappo and Mbulu. In 1956 she was appointed Inspector of MMM Hospitals and went on visitation of hospitals in Angola and east and west Africa.

She also spent time as novice mistress in Drogheda. One saying of hers was: ‘You wash, I’ll dry and I’ll mind my clean habit’, but part of a poem she wrote during her novitiate years is more often quoted:

‘Tis the effort really matters,
Not the good you think you do,
For what we do is but little
Were we to ourselves but true’

At the first MMM General Chapter in 1962 she was elected 3rd General Councillor to Mother Mary. She was also engaged in marriage guidance and family planning. She was called on to give many lectures on the Billings method and on terminal care.

Finally ill health caught up with her and curtailed many of her activities, but she still continued writing articles.

Sr. Monica died in Drogheda and is buried there in the MMM plot.