The remarkable life of Sister Ann: A nun like no other

MY first memory of my cousin, Ann O’Halloran, is seeing her clad in black leather, riding on the back of her boyfriend’s BSA bike while speeding past Cork City Hall. She was 16.

It was the mid-1950s, and she was about as far away from a nun as you could imagine.

But two years later, Sister Ann did indeed join holy orders.

It was a decision that led to a remarkable career as a nun and teacher that earned her love and respect across the USA, South America and Africa.

A passionate advocate of peace, Ann even riled parts of the establishment when she went on an 11-day hunger strike in support of dying IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in 1981. Truly, she was a nun like no other...

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Ann O’Halloran was born in Cork city on July 6, 1941, one of five children, who included her brother John, the 1966 Cork All-Ireland winning hurler.

She joined the international Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM) in 1959 after graduating from the Marymount School in Neuilly, France, and was posted to a semi-cloistered order in Tarrytown, New York.

Her timing was good. A year later, Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II and ordered the Church and religious orders to open their doors and go out as Jesus did to live among the poor. Ann needed no encouragement, at a time when civil rights and anti-war movements were rising up.

She befriended the top New York journalists of their time, Pulitzer-winning Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, both of whom had Irish roots. Through them, she met the Berrigan brothers, pacifist priests who led opposition to the Vietnam War.

The Cork woman joined them in organising an escape from the Vietnam draft for young men, shepherding them to Canada and Mexico for safety. It was perilous work, with the FBI in pursuit, but Ann had her Order’s full support.

I picture her then, in the early 1970s, a petite, pretty 30-year-old. It is a hot summer’s evening and she is walking alone through the run-down streets of Harlem. Her worn blue shoes are flat, she’s dressed in a calf-length dark skirt and matching cotton jacket. Her hair is tucked under a beige cloth cap pulled low on her forehead.

Ann’s life work was simple: help, educate and empower the poor wherever she found them. She did that in New York, in the jungles of South America, and in Africa, carrying out the words of the RSHM Mission Statement: “The challenge of the gospel and the spirit of faith and zeal which marked our founding Sisters, urge us to respond to the needs of our time and to work with others in action for evangelical justice.”

Under her adopted name Sister Rosaleen, Ann furthered her education. After receiving a BA degree from Marymount College and an MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York, she volunteered to teach in South America.

In 1964, Ann arrived, fluent in Spanish, at the Marymount School in Bogotá, Colombia.

It was a febrile time. The FARC revolutionaries had just formed into a military force and clashed openly with the Government and the Catholic Church’s teaching.

Young Ann worked amid these social upheavals as an advocate for the poor around her. With the help of river guides, she and her religious colleagues frequently ventured by boat into the jungle interiors with food, water, and the Holy Eucharist to administer to fleeing civilians and rebels alike.

They were perilous times in Colombia, religious personnel were targets for kidnappings, murder, and intimidation. In 1968, the RSHM order closed its Marymount Schools in the country, evacuating the nuns to the U.S.

Back in New York, Ann resumed her educational ministry and taught in its dangerous, deprived neighbourhoods. The people trusted and confided in her. She was invited into their lives and bore witness to their family celebrations, setbacks and despairs.

She rallied politicians, lawmakers, educators, journalists, captains of industry, and the Catholic hierarchy, to assist her.

She played a key role as restaurants donated food to the needy, politicians moved to better represent local people’s needs, educators offered scholarships for students, and journalists highlighted segregation as a blot on New York’s good name.

Ann also had the ear of Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Terence Cooke, whose Galway parents named him after Terence MacSwiney, martyr Lord Mayor of Cork. He sought her counsel on his pastoral reforming agenda to aid the city’s poor.

Ann loved the spirit and resilience of Harlem’s black women. She told me of the poor mother who had rented furniture for an Easter weekend when her family visited from North Carolina. She wanted them to think she was doing well. The furniture would be returned next morning. When Ann asked her how she kept her spirits up in the face of such challenges, she replied: “Sister Rosaleen, I refuse to be unhappy.”

It was that spirit that motivated Ann as she set up community centres focusing on adult education, drop-in food banks, after-school tutoring, counselling sessions, nutrition guidance, and small business start-ups.

Into Africa

During Ann’s educational and social ministry in Harlem, she developed a strong bond with the African-American community. She had long wanted to work in Africa, and transferred to a teaching post in Dangamvura, Zimbabwe, from 1991 to 1994.

Here, she taught large groups of women, giving them confidence to set up small businesses so they could feed and educate their kin.

Initially, Ann had great hope for Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe because of his close ties to Church and Irish missionaries in his youth. But, by 1991, he had abandoned his socialist ideology and violently formed a one-party state. It deeply saddened her.

By 1994, Catholic religious groups were being targeted in remote rural outposts. Ann, now in her mid-50s, and her community of middle-aged nuns were attacked and robbed in their huts. Local women tended to them until help arrived.

The RSHM had no choice but to evacuate the nuns. The Sisters were heartbroken to leave the local women and young children who depended on them, but Ann was not done with Zimbabwe.

She had been diagnosed with early macular degeneration and was treated in New York and Ireland. Recharged, she resumed her educational ministry in Africa. She told me they were some of the happiest years of her life.

By 2016, her eyesight failing, Ann finally and sadly left Africa. Heartbreakingly, she totally lost her sight soon after and retired to the Marymount Convent in Tarrytown. She had ministered during some of the most socially and politically tumultuous decades in history and in some of the world’s most dangerous regions.

In 2021, Ann was close to death. I left my home in Florida to see her one last time and entered her tiny, sparse room in the beautiful convent. She was sedated and comfortable. In a panic, I turned to Sr Francesca, her dear friend, and whispered: “What will I say to her?” She replied simply: “Ask her to say a prayer with you.”

“Ann, it’s Breda,” I said, and I leaned over her. Her eyes shut, she flashed her broad smile, reached up and clasped both of my hands. “You’re very good to come,” she whispered. “Will we say a prayer together, Ann?” We started in union - ‘Our Father...’”

Ann and nuns like her were warriors. Some were traumatised, like war veterans. They had come to the Order as young middle-class nun recruits to teach middle-class kids in Catholic schools and ended up on the frontlines of war, poverty and danger.

Many, including Ann, had been seriously assaulted.

Their teaching salaries were handed to the Order and they just kept money for basics. Often, their families in Ireland sent the airfare for them to visit home.

Ann died on November 7, 2021. She was a warrior - and her name was Sister Rosaleen. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis.

Hunger strike in solidarity with Sands

ON May 2, 1981, a petite lady approaching her 40th birthday deftly put her shoe through the glass front door of the British Airways offices in Manhattan.

This was all part of a series of protests by Cork nun Ann O’Halloran - Sister Rosaleen - to draw attention in the U.S to the plight of Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland.

Ann went on an 11-day hunger strike outside the United Nations building in Manhattan in solidarity, and did a similar protest in Washington and an all-night vigil on the steps of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. TV camera crews followed her protests, which made headlines around the world.

Sands eventually died on May 5, in a protest - which included the deaths of nine other hunger strikers - against the British removal of Special Category Status for IRA prisoners. The deaths attracted both praise and criticism and put the Troubles on the global map.

On May 12, 1981, Ann caried out another public protest, when she rushed onto the stage at a charity dinner function for the Ireland Fund Awards in New York, and pleaded with the audience to recognise the “martyrdoms” of Sands and his fellow hunger strikers.

The spotlight on the stage was shut off, but the nun resisted attempts to remove her and persisted to call for support for the hunger strikers, before being led away sobbing.

Ann was passionate about starting a serious dialogue to bring about peace on her home island, and worked with other religious leaders toward a peaceful and just solution to the conflict.