Dr Lucie McCrory- Principal at Mercedes College, Perth
Dr Lucie McCrory recently returned from a 7-day Mercy Pilgrimage in Dublin. She learnt about our faith filled, inspiring and innovative founder, Catherine McAuley. A woman before her time. She said it was moving and quite surreal to enter her home, sit in her bedroom in the Callaghan’s residence, Coolock House, and experience all the works of our globally connected Mercy Ministries. The schools, hospitals, aged care, social work, and justice advocation, started as ideas which germinated in her mind and heart through prayer, during the liminal space of caring for the elderly couple in Coolock House. Catherine was a big believer in God’s providence and had an active and personal relationship with God. Her deep faith guided her decision making and allowed her to trust that the unfolding of life, was all part of God’s greater plan.
The pilgrims were based in Baggot Street in the House of Mercy, where the first mission began. Catherine’s ability to navigate between worlds is a key point that has stayed with Dr McCrory. She was an impressive shape shifter who moved between the rich and the poor, the Catholics and Protestants, politicians and religious, and the men and women of her time. She navigated successfully, maintaining both understandable and unlikely friendships and companions in pursuit of her mission. Catherine worked within the reality of the social constructs of her day to impact real and lasting change on those constructs, from the ground up. In short, she was an active liberator; of women, girls, the uneducated, the poor and needy, injustices, and was seen as a great collaborator across many spheres. Dr McCrory said it was a pleasure and a privilege to be immersed in her world, to enter her story and to have a living understanding of the foundational stories and values of our wonderful Mercedes community.
Mercy international Centre, Baggot Street
Baggot St, Dublin
Pilgrims
Catherine’s Grave