Mount Sackville Secondary School

Mount Sackville remembers 160 years of Cluny Education in Ireland Mount Sackville remembers 160 years of Cluny Education in Ireland Mount Sackville remembers 160 years of Cluny Education in Ireland md3.jpgMD5.jpgMD6.jpg Saturday the 12th of December, 2020 marks the 160th anniversary of the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny in Ireland. We wish to acknowledge the contribution and achievements of the Sisters who have been synonymous with the education of young women in Ireland for many generations. The order, founded in France in 1807 by Blessed Anne Marie Javouhey, has been instrumental in the education of thousands of young women as well as providing a novitiate for those who received God’s calling. In recent years they have also been involved in providing nursing care for the elderly. “ We have been asked to go to Ireland to teach the poor and the well -to- do. I have been assured that we could do much good there. If such be the will of God, I agree to this foundation with all my heart”. Blessed Anne Marie wrote the above in 1850. However, it was to be ten years before the congregation would set foot on Irish soil. From the time the penal laws ended many bishops encouraged religious orders to come to Ireland. The Ireland of 1860 was very different from today. Irish land was owned by landlords who played a pivotal role in shaping the rural fabric of the country and landlord–tenant relationships came to dominate the mid-Victorian period.