W HAT I R E L A N D OW E S TO TH E SISTE RS
DROGHEDA’S
Most Famous
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MEMBER OF A WEALTHY DUBLIN FAMILY, VOLUNTEER NURSE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR , FOUNDRESS OF A CONGREGATION OF MEDICAL MISSIONARIES, MARY MARTIN LEFT HER MARK ON IRELAND AND ESPECIALLY ON THE TOWN OF DROGHEDA. BY JOHN SCALLY
She
remains one of the most iconic names in Drogheda. Marie Martin, better known as Mother Mary Martin, was born in Dublin to a wealthy Catholic merchant family. The eldest girl in a family of twelve children, her domestic bliss was smashed into tiny pieces by the tragic death of her father on St Patrick’s Day in 1907. In 1914, when her brothers Tommy and Charlie, and her boyfriend, Gerald,
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enlisted for service in World War I, Marie commenced a three-month training course at the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, preparing to nurse wounded soldiers as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD). NURSE AT THE FRONT Like many brave women before, she sought to bring the faith to a new audience. She sailed for Malta in October 1915 where she was posted
to St. George’s Military Hospital. War cast a long shadow over her family. While there, she heard the distressing news that her brother, Charlie, had been wounded and was missing. She invested significant time and energy seeking news of him from comrades who had been with him when he was wounded and hoped against hope that he would turn up on one of the hospital ships. The following June she was called up for service in France and was there during the infamous Battle of the Somme in 1916. It was then she received the dreaded news that Charlie was dead. Her strategy for coping with her own loss was to transfer her energies into caring for those who were wounded. In the process she acquired considerable experience in nursing young men with gangrene and gas poisoning, and others whose injuries were compounded with skin diseases like scabies and impetigo. After her 25th birthday, Marie broke the news to her boyfriend that marriage was not on her horizons. Still unsure where this would lead, she trained as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, and sailed for Nigeria in 1921. OFF TO AFRICA Initially she had an understandable naivety about her mission in Nigeria as it took considerable time to
appreciate all the nuances of the new culture she encountered. Intuitively she knew her past practices would somehow need to be adapted for an African region. Such inculturation required her to be constantly looking for what was best for the Nigerian context and be attuned to the key skill of modern missionary methods – listening. The only approach that would deliver success was: mind to mind and heart to heart. She quickly learned not just to listen to the words that were used, but tones in which she could distinguish delicacy, independence and compassion. She had a strong sense of the privilege she enjoyed in entering into a people’s culture and to be allowed to see the world through their eyes. Her faith life was enriched by nature which imbued her with humble silence and wordless prayer. She faced many problems on the road to founding the Medical Missionaries of Mary. Her vision was as clear as a summer’s day: dedicated women were needed, women who would bring health care to places where there was none, and would give particular care to pregnant women, mothers and infants. She wanted her Sisters to receive the most professional training possible, but the Church at that time did not look favourably at the prospect of women religious practising surgery or obstetrics. It took a lot of
