January 9, 2010
60 years later, Mercy Sisters recall ‘glorious adventure’ of coming to U.S.
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
The five travelers, celebrating at Mercy Convent in Auburn on Dec. 4, 2009, 60 years to the day that they first arrived at the convent in 1949. Left to right (back row): Sister Anne McCrohan, Sister Mary Raphael Doyle, Sister Mary Michael Murphy; (front row) Sister Ellen Philbin, Sister Mary Martin Mulroy. Photo courtesy of Sister Katherine Doyle, RSM
The jubilarians as postulants soon after their arrival at Mercy Convent in Auburn. Left to right: Mercy Sister Ellen Philbin, Sister Mary Michael Murphy (seated), Sister Anne McCrohan, Sister Mary Raphael Doyle, Sister Mary Martin (seated), Sister Mary Celine Heneghan (deceased). Photo courtesy of the archives of Religious Sisters of Mercy, Auburn
On Nov. 19, 1949, five young women gathered in the port town of Cobh on the southeastern coast of Ireland. They prepared to board the passenger liner Britannic, bound for New York City, the first stop on their journey to the community of the Religious Sisters of Mercy in Auburn, Calif.
Ranging in age from 18 to 22, the young women were leaving forever their families and the familiar country of their birth. In an age before cell phones and computers, when a letter could take weeks to cross the Atlantic, they fully expected to see their mothers next “in heaven,” as one traveler later recalled.
Six decades later, the five travelers, now known as Mercy Sisters Mary Martin Mulroy, Ellen Philbin, Anne McCrohan, Mary Michael Murphy and Mary Raphael Doyle, gathered at Mercy Convent in Auburn to celebrate their 60th jubilee in the community. In an interview with The Herald, the sisters recalled the journey to their new home in 1949 and the continuing journey of their vocations.
Cobh was fog-bound for the two days that the ship delayed departure to make repairs, Sister McCrohan recalled. The five travelers became better acquainted. They had met as a group for the first time at the consulate in Dublin, where they made arrangements to emigrate to the United States.
Three women — Martin, Doyle and Philbin — hailed from neighboring villages in Swinford parish in County Mayo, on the middle west coast of Ireland. Murphy came from the town of Carlow, home of the Mercy Sisters’ foundress Mother Catherine McCauley, in County Carlow, in the Southeast; McCrohan grew up sailing in Caherciveen, a peninsula port town in County Kerry’s southwest coast.
Two Mercy Sisters from the community in Ireland accompanied the young women to Cobh, but returned to their convent, leaving the five travelers to look after one another.
On Nov. 22, the Britannic got underway, taking seven days to cross the Atlantic through a late autumn storm. It was a rough crossing for all but the young sailor from County Kerry. The others had no appetite for their first American Thanksgiving meal, served on board ship.
Relatives met the ship in New York, announcing over the ship’s public address system that they were calling for “five girls from Ireland headed for Sacramento.” They settled the young women at the Leo House, a quiet Catholic guest house run by the Sisters of St. Agnes. Aunts and uncles escorted the new immigrants around the city for two days. The travelers saw skyscrapers so tall that walking uphill created the unsettling illusion that the buildings were about to fall on them, one sister recalled.
Then they boarded the transcontinental train for California. Leaving behind the skyscrapers of New York, they passed though the outskirts of smaller cities and towns, over snow-covered mountain passes and across the brown deserts of Utah and Nevada.
“We traveled by train for three days and three nights,” Sister McCrohan recalled. While traveling through the desert, she remembers wondering what people who lived there could possibly eat, where nothing green grew.
The young women arrived in Sacramento on the evening of Dec. 4, 1949, more than two weeks after gathering at Cobh. They were met by Mother Mary Barbara Ley and Sister Mary Gerard Schmitt and two laypeople from the convent, who ferried them up the hill to Auburn in two cars.
Sister Murphy had never seen a sister behind the wheel before. She wondered briefly how Sister Schmitt could drive, wearing the traditional habit and veil. Then she climbed into the car with the others.
An hour later, the five women reached their new home, where they were given their postulants’ clothes and welcomed into the community.
Looking back, the sisters recognize that theirs was a daring adventure, though it didn’t seem so daring at the time.
“We went into the unknown,” Sister Mulroy said. “The contract was that there was no going back — you said goodbye to your own family forever.
“But you were joining a new family who claims you and are going to be your family for the rest of your life,” she added.
The five sisters noted that becoming a woman religious was very much part of the culture in Ireland in those days. Almost all of the sisters had relatives who were priests or religious. Popular magazine articles profiled religious missionaries.
Sister Philbin had originally intended to be a missionary in Africa, she said. But she was influenced by a retired diocesan priest from Sacramento, Father Patrick Kennedy, who had returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly to promote vocations for the Sacramento Diocese.
Sister McCrohan mentioned Father Kennedy as well. Sister McCrohan and Sister Mulroy both observed that there had been a great increase in the diocese’s population at the time and a corresponding demand for Catholic schools, but that parishes found it difficult to pay for teachers — hence the need for vocations. Religious sisters worked for very little money.
“It is all for God,” Sister Mulroy said.
After six months as postulants, two years as novices, and three years in their first professions, all five sisters took their final vows in August 1955.
Four sisters became teachers. Sister Murphy “went into business,” the sisters said with a smile, since she became the community’s treasurer for 35 years. Then she spent 25 years working in finance for Mercy hospitals in Redding, Mount Shasta and Sacramento before retiring to the convent in Auburn.
The sisters in educational ministry have retired also from their various appointments at schools throughout the diocese, though Sister McCrohan has had another career as a hospital chaplain for the past 20 years and Sister Mulroy has spent 20 years as a pastoral associate doing program development for parishes — work they both loved.
When the sisters were in their 30s, sisters in the diocese began to visit their families in Ireland again.
“The priests had been going back to visit every couple of years,” Sister Doyle said, “and they began to think that maybe we should be able to go back, too.” The diocesan priests began to put money aside for airfare for the sisters, she said.
Sister Murphy’s mother, who had been told that she would next see her daughter in heaven, was still alive when her daughter returned for a visit, Sister Murphy was happy to report. Sister McCrohan noted that 20 people met her plane at Shannon airport when she returned, though she said that many of her classmates her age were gone — they had emigrated.
All of the sisters go back to Ireland periodically now for family events. But one sister observed that she needs a score card to keep track of all of her nieces and nephews and their children. The sisters also note that they’ve lived much longer in their community family than in the families they left behind.
All five sisters welcome the changes resulting from the Second Vatican Council, they said, especially the liturgical changes of celebrating Mass in the vernacular rather than in Latin, and having the celebrant face the people. They were also glad to be able to wear lighter clothing than the dark wool habit that would have suited a cooler climate, they noted.
Sister McCrohan said that her mother’s reaction to the changes in the church was to say, “The old people always said it should be this way.”
All of them say they have been sustained in their vocations by the grace of God.
“I am so very grateful to God that he called me to this life,” Sister Mulroy said. “I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.”
Sister Philbin and Sister Doyle noted that they are very happy they followed their calling, adding that it is a much greater adventure when they look back than it seemed as they lived it.
“This is a beautiful and loving life,” Sister Murphy said with a broad smile.
Sister McCrohan pointed out that the Sisters of Mercy emphasize the community’s prayer life and that their prayer life sustains all of them. The sisters pray in community and attend Mass every day. They make several prayer retreats every year, including an eight-day prayer retreat, a retreat during the last four days of the year, and Easter Triduum retreats. Everyone prays the rosary, she said. Many also practice centering prayer.
Learning about religious life continues throughout one’s lifetime, she noted. Even the work she does every day deepens her prayer life and her relationship to God.
When she thinks about the long journey that started for her and for the others in Ireland all those years ago, Sister McCrohan said, “I’d like to see young people pick up the torch.”
“It’s a good life. It’s a good way of helping people. And it’s a glorious adventure.”
