In the modern world little notice is taken when a young woman consecrates herself to the contemplative life in an enclosed convent. When 60 years have passed and her death is announced, not many more than her community and a handful of surviving relatives and friends will mourn her passing. But in the spirit of the life of self-abnegation she had chosen, she will present to her Maker a curriculum vitae laden with honours.
In 1938 the economic war with all its hardships for the farming community had just run its course when Sarah Ryan, the only daughter of a farmer with a small holding near Templemore, Co Tipperary, announced her intention to take the veil.
Sarah was born in 1918, in an era in church history when young girls, certain of their vocation, joyfully entered a Carmelite convent straight from school - though perhaps, as in Sarah's case, to the dismay of her family. Inspired by the life of St Therese of Lisieux, who knows? Sixty years ago the cult of the Little Flower was deeply rooted in Irish homes.
A year later, as the nations of Europe deployed their armies for war, Sarah made her religious profession, invoking the spirit of the 12th-century pilgrim for peace as Sister Mary Francis of Jesus Crucified.
What makes a nun holy? In Sister Francis, gentleness, self-effacement and her joyfulness bubbling over were the hallmarks of a Carmelite who never doubted the God-given direction of her life.
In 1982, Sister Francis was prioress of the Carmelite Monastery dedicated to St Joseph, at Kilmacud, Co Dublin, when the Rome pilgrimage organised to mark the Diamond Jubilee of the Garda Siochana ran into trouble.
On the eve of departure, it was discovered that the pilgrimage medals, designed by Tim O'Neill, were not ready, the clasps and ribbons having yet to be attached. The problem was presented to Sister Francis, who laughed quietly at the discomfiture of the messenger.
It seemed an impossible task to assemble a thousand medals in a matter of days. Making an assembly line, the nuns measured and cut the ribbon, snipped thread into appropriate lengths and threaded needles, while others sewed on the ribbons. Every careful stitch a work of art. For each medal ribbon, 20 stitches. In four-and-a-half days, 20,000 stitches, each a prayer for the success of the venture!
The pilgrimage got off to a bad start in Rome due to a labour dispute in the main hotel. At the Vatican, there was no reassurance that Pope John Paul II would grant a promised special audience - the outbreak of war in the South Atlantic had brought the diplomatic world to the Apostolic Palace, seeking the Pope's intervention.
At a pavement cafe close to the Vatican, a priest at an adjoining table spoke in a foreign accent. What was the meaning of the medal with its highly visible blue ribbon he had seen "all over Rome".
Hearing of the ambition to meet the Pope, the stranger shook his head doubtfully. After a reflective silence, he pointed across the road to a blackened bust of the Blessed Virgin in a niche above a church door. Get that statue cleaned, he urged, and Our Lady would arrange the special audience!
Later in the day, learning of the suggested facelift, Mgr John Hanly, Rector of the Irish College, was dumbfounded. By virtue of the 1929 Concordat, all ecclesiastical property in Rome belonged, not to the church, but to the city fathers. An unofficial working party would have been promptly arrested!
Against all the odds, Pope John Paul II arranged to receive the Irish police pilgrims, transferring his morning Mass from his private chapel to the Lourdes Grotto in the Papal Gardens, where a thousand gilt medals glinted in the early morning sunshine.
Resuming choir duties after her years in office, Sister Francis went her quiet way about the convent. With her toolbox, she maintained electrical appliances, changed a light fuse, repaired a lock, gave a lick of paint where it was needed. In all of this, she found God among the pots and pans of her daily life, faithful in all things to the end, dying in the diamond jubilee year of her religious profession and the 81st year of her life.
G.A.