A NUN who refused to leave her teaching job at a Presentation Order school after being instructed to do so by her superior should be given her job back, an Employment Appeals Tribunal has ruled. During five days of hearings the order “insisted” that it was “permissible for religious orders to act in a manner contrary to the law of the land”.
“The courts have allowed religious orders to openly discriminate in circumstances where such discrimination would not ordinarily be lawful. Such orders must be allowed to run their own affairs in their own interests,” the order’s counsel told the tribunal.
The three-member tribunal, in a majority decision, found Sr Maria O’Sullivan of Grange Way, Pinecourt, Grange, Douglas, Cork, had been unfairly dismissed by the board of management of the Presentation primary school in Bandon.
The tribunal said the way Sr Maria was treated at the time of her dismissal was “grossly undeserved, hugely disrespectful and is a source of shame on those who carried it out”.
“The tribunal is also concerned that the board of management or at least certain people on that board appeared to be acting in conjunction” with the order’s provincial leader to remove Sr Maria from the school.
“It seemed that each side in this untidy situation looked elsewhere when challenged on it by the claimant.
“This dismissal was wholly unjustified in all the circumstances,” the determination says.
Sr Maria, who qualified as a teacher in 1975, had worked at the school since 1991 and refused to leave her job.
The order argued that as it had the power to nominate a member of the congregation to one of its schools it followed that it had the authority “albeit implied, to withdraw that nomination” and then the board of management was obliged to terminate that member’s employment.
When the board of management said it was terminating her employment, Sr Maria wrote to her superior saying “I now hold you personally responsible for the loss of my employment, loss of salary and pension”.
Sr Maria’s provincial leader wrote to her in August 2006 saying that as she had not agreed to take a career break as requested by the order’s leadership team she was “withdrawing” her from Bandon school and “missioning you to a period of rest”.
The provincial leader told the tribunal the congregation were bound by their own rules and constitution which were based on canon law and that Sr Maria had to comply with them because of her membership and her vows.
“However, the witness also accepted that their members were subjected to the laws of the State,” the determination says.