LITTLE COMPANY OF MARY
THE LIFE OF
VENERABLE MARY POTTER
1847 – 1913
As they go
through the
Bitter Valley
they make it
a place
of springs
(Psalm 84)
CONTENTS
Page
Preface
Birth of Mary Potter and Childhood
1
Godfrey King and Sisters of Mercy
7
Mystical Experiences
13
Journey to Hyson Green –
Creating the LCM
35
Journey to Rome – LCM Recognised
58
Calvary Hospital, Rome
77
LCM in the world – Expansion
85
Mary Potter’s last days
105
Preface
The pages which follow were originally written for a very specific
purpose: to help the design company creating the Little Company of
Mary Heritage Centre in Nottingham better understand what Mary
Potter’s life and Congregation were, and are, really about.
But initially the task I’d been given had been much simpler: to select
material from the LCM archives which might be used in the Heritage
Centre’s exhibition rooms. However, as I spent more time with the
original documents, and began to understand better myself how Mary
Potter’s original vision had perhaps been partially obscured by some of
the later developments, I realised that a more comprehensive account
needed to be given. And that this new task was going to be far more
absorbing than I had anticipated.
The wealth of original documents in the LCM archive is truly
exceptional. I can say that because I have spent a lot of time looking at
various archives over the years, and they nearly always have many
important gaps. But the LCM has copies of the very letters that Mary
Potter wrote to her spiritual director, ‘Very Rev Monsignor Virtue,’ ‘the
father whom [My Mother Mary] sent to me,’ during the time she was
undergoing her key mystical experiences. Not just transcriptions of the
letters, but copies of her actual handwritten pages. This, in my
experience, is truly exceptional. Although the letters are undated, and so
piecing together the order in which they were written is quite difficult,
you nevertheless are able to follow Mary Potter through her
foundational experiences for what became the LCM.
I was able to share her frequent puzzlement about what exactly it was
that she had experienced and what exactly it was that it meant. She
continually wrestles with this in the letters. But because she is gradually
opposed by Monsignor Virtue, who eventually dismisses her
experiences wholesale as a delusion, she also has to make an extra effort
to convince him why what she has experienced is a real communication
and that it can be made sense of; and how important it is to do that. I
was surprised to learn just how rigorous and forceful she could be in
i
arguing her case; and her dedication to the task, in the face of
Monsignor Virtue’s opposition, is remarkable. She over and over again
tries to make convincing sense of what she has experienced and
received during these times, and in reading the letters you undergo that
process too. As a way of grasping what’s at the heart of the LCM, I
think there really is no better way to understand and absorb its essence
and purpose.
Of course, Mary Potter went on to continually reassess these
experiences throughout her life, as she built up the LCM worldwide, and
the record of that is also there in the archives. As I attempted to portray
the thoughts and feelings, as well as the circumstances, of each stage of
Mary Potter’s life as it was to be shown in the Heritage Centre’s various
rooms, it was always possible to draw on her original words. Again, this
is invaluable for really trying to get an inside understanding of her life.
But the other enormous help I had were three key biographies, written at
different stages of the LCM’s development, each in a very different
style and with a very different perspective: The Life of Mother Mary
Potter (1935) by Eve Healy, Mother Mary Potter (1961) by Patrick
Dougherty, and One Woman’s Journey (2000) by Elizabeth A. West.
These books covered the same ‘facts’ but did not always tally with each
other on the details. And even if they agreed on the details, the
conclusions they drew from them often differed. So one thing I had to
do was to make use of each of their strengths, but also explore more
thoroughly the records when they differed. And being able to go back to
the original documents to see what formed the basis for each of their
accounts was invaluable for this.
Originally I thought I ought to revise these pages to suit their new
purpose. I imagine that most of the readers of this book will already
know a good deal about Mary Potter and the Little Company of Mary.
Whereas when I wrote the original document it was for a group of
people who were finding it difficult to grasp some of the basics. That
often meant repeating important points and supplying as many original
accounts as I could, in order that the design team, and then the visitor,
could get as close as possible to what Mary Potter was thinking and
ii
feeling at the different stages of her life. And I thought that might not be
right for the readership of this book.
But after thinking it through I changed my mind. I realised that it had
often been the unrevised form of the documents I came across in the
archive that made me think most fruitfully about Mary Potter and the
LCM. It was the things which I didn’t immediately understand or know
the point of which led me to search around in ways I wouldn’t otherwise
have done, and to have new thoughts and insights which helped me to
come to a fuller understanding of the origins and development of the
LCM.
So I decided that what I wrote back in 2008-9 ought to stay as it is, in
the form it was originally written, and join the long line of similar
attempts to understand Mary Potter and her Congregation. And in that
way, the reader of this book may also find they go through a little of
what Mary Potter went through in trying to understand her mystical
experiences – how to distinguish the true from the false, the authentic
from the misleading, and what coherent sense can be given to it all. And
that is something which she continued to do right to the end of her life
and which I know her Congregation continues to do today.
Nathan Hartshorn
Researcher
December 2012
iii
BIRTH OF MARY POTTER
AND CHILDHOOD
GODFREY KING AND
SISTERS OF MERCY
1
Mary Potter was born to parents who disagreed about their religion. Her
father and mother, William and Mary Ann Potter, had been married in
an Anglican Church, but her mother had converted to Catholicism just
two years before Mary Potter’s birth. All Mary Ann’s relatives,
however, were Protestants.
It is not known why Mary Ann converted, but at that time there was a
revival of Catholicism in England due to the recent lifting of restrictions
on Catholics which had been in place since the Reformation.
William Potter is said to have had ‘no real regard for any religion’ (Eve
Healy, p.21) – ‘nominally a Protestant, he practised no religion’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.14). But he was angry when his wife insisted on having
their fourth son, George, baptised as a Catholic; she then secretly had
their first three sons – William, Thomas and Henry – who had all been
christened in a Protestant Church, baptised as Catholics too.
On 27th May 1847, while pregnant with Mary Potter, Mary Ann
received the sacrament of confirmation. She was very ill with
tuberculosis. She wanted to protect both herself and her unborn child.
In the Autobiographical Notes which Mary Potter wrote later in life, she
describes how:
‘An old Irish governess told my Mother that her unborn infant would be
so much better if she went to Communion frequently, so she did so.
Another at my birth putting on before anything the silver medal of Our
Lady that my mother had prepared to consecrate me to Her, and she (as
she used to tell me) keeping close to Our Lord all the time, with her
crucifix in hand, would be reminded (by the nurse), "Now, Mam, your
little prayer," and she was saying the Memorare as I was born. I was
baptised and called only Mary after Our Lady, to my father's wrath.’
Born on 22nd November 1847, Mary Potter was baptised a short time
later on 12th December 1847.
2
However, disagreement over religion was not the only problem that
beset Mary Potter’s parents. Her father, who worked as a pawnbroker,
had got heavily into debt. He decided to emigrate to Australia to earn
money, and just over a year after Mary Potter’s birth he left the family.
A final and complete break came, however, when he disagreed over the
financial arrangement made in a family will.
As one of his sons, Thomas, later wrote:
‘He wrote saying that from that day forward (the date of the letter) we
were all of us – wife, children and brother – strangers to him, and he
never broke the silence … He was a very stern man, and not one of us
have any recollection of kindness received from him.’
Elizabeth West sums up this period of Mary Potter’s early life very
well:
‘Mary Potter’s early years were marked by her family’s shame of
bankruptcy, a broken home, and a life of religious and social isolation.’
(Elizabeth West, p.3)
Mary Potter was taught at home by her mother until she was eight. She
then attended a small Catholic boarding school for girls called Cupola
House (in its Catholic Directory advertisement it describes itself as ‘An
establishment for Young Ladies, where only eight boarders are
received’), run by the Misses Brennan.
The formal annual letters which Mary Potter wrote to her mother from
this school give a good indication of the type of person Cupola House
was hoping to mould and the regime to which Mary Potter had been
entrusted:
3
‘Cupola House, 11 December 1860
My dear Mamma,
Each revolving year impresses upon me more fervently the great
obligation I am under to you for your unremitting care and solicitude for
me. I trust my application to my studies and by my general good
conduct I shall convince you that I am anxious to acknowledge the debt
of gratitude I owe you.
The Misses Brennan desires me to present their compliments and to
inform you that the vacation commences on Dec 20th and will terminate
Jan 21st 1861. They unite with me in wishing you many happy returns of
the season.
Believe me, my dear Mamma, to be your affectionate daughter,
Mary Potter’
With its thick, lace-edged paper and exquisite handwriting, the look of
this letter as much as its content speaks volumes. It shows that Mary
Potter was being trained to be the perfect young lady in terms of
manners and etiquette. The style and language is so formal and unlike
that of a child, that it shows she is already being presented as adult
before she is. The actual paper it is written on is also obviously
expensive and best quality, and that, together with the great care taken
over the handwriting, again projects an image of wealth and class that
the school is obviously trying to promote.
However, a very different impression of Mary Potter at this time is
given by another letter she wrote to her mother only a few months
earlier:
4
‘Bow Road, 3 July 1860.
My dear Mamma,
I daresay you were very surprised at my not coming home on Monday
evening with my brothers. I am going to stop with Aunt Saul till
Saturday, and then Aunt will bring me home. I sleep in the front room
by myself. It is next to Aunt’s and opens into it by a door which Aunt
leaves open. Aunt took me to the Zoological Gardens yesterday and I
enjoyed myself very much. Aunt Saul is so kind. She has given me a
pretty little box of Dominoes made of brass, I think, which Aunt said
she had when she was only a year older than me.
Aunt has gone out today to dinner and Uncle is going to take me on the
water this afternoon. I am so happy Mamma, only George I think, will
be dull without me. You must ask my brothers to take him out.
Dear Mamma, I would write you a longer letter and I intended to do so,
only I am now going out for a walk with a friend of Aunt’s, Mr. Church.
With love to all my brothers, I am dear Mamma, your very affectionate
daughter,
Mary Potter
PS. You will not be dull without me, as you have George with you.’
While Mrs Potter was the archetypal Victorian mother in the control she
wielded over her children, and in the obedience she expected from them,
this letter shows that even at the age of 12 her only daughter Mary
Potter was quite capable of independent thought and action.
Mary Potter had been born with a heart defect and weak lungs, and she
was often ill throughout her life. Nevertheless, she was able to complete
her education up until the age of 18, and is described as being good at
music and French.
5
She was confirmed on 21st May 1857 by the very first Bishop of
Southwark to be appointed after the Restoration of the Catholic
Hierarchy in 1850, Dr Grant, and took her first Holy Communion a few
months later on 8th December.
However, despite this Catholic education, Mary Potter later wrote:
‘I must say I did not know my religion, for I never remember a single
instruction at school or at home upon my religion. My mother naturally
thought all that was necessary was done at school, but going to
Catechism at the Church once a week or fortnight, was all the
instruction, and until twenty years old I was ignorant of most necessary
things.’
And it seems that at this stage in her life becoming a religious Sister was
far from her aim:
‘As a child I dreaded the thought of being a nun. I had a kind of
foreboding that I should one day be one, but I did not like the thought.’
I would expect a visitor to conclude at the end of this section of the
exhibition that Mary Potter had had a difficult childhood - broken home,
absent father, illnesses - but had battled through it. And that she had no
real idea of what lay ahead in terms of her subsequent spiritual journey.
6
Godfrey King and Sisters of Mercy
After finishing at Cupola House, Mary Potter went to live with her
brother Thomas and their mother in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth.
Thomas worked as a railway employee and had recently been
transferred there. At that time Portsmouth with still part of the diocese
of Southwark, and so Dr Grant continued to be Mary Potter’s confessor
and director.
A frequent visitor to the Potter household in Southsea was a friend of
Thomas’s called Godfrey King. He was well known in the community
for having high religious aspirations. Mrs Potter was very careful about
who she let Mary associate with (‘My mother had some fixed idea that
she could not be too careful of me, that it was a solemn charge given by
God’, and it seems that Godfrey King was one of the few people who
met Mrs Potter’s high standards.
Mary and Godfrey gradually became close, and Godfrey seems to have
tried to deepen Mary’s religious understanding by lending her religious
books to read, as well as change her cheerful personality into a more
serious demeanour, which he thought more appropriate for a spiritual
approach to life.
It appears from what Mary wrote nearly a decade later, just prior to
establishing the Little Company of Mary, that this attempt to modify her
personality was unsuccessful, although she agrees that it might have
been a help if it had occurred:
‘I have often thought that if I had been different, they might have sooner
believed me at home. That is to say, if I had not been interested in all
the home affairs, just like other people going about home duties etc.,
they would not have thought quite as they do, even now perhaps they
may wonder why I am not a little more serious, if I really believe I have
got to do such a work.’
But despite their different personalities, the bond between Mary and
Godfrey grew to the point that they decided to become engaged.
7
However, their engagement and idea of married life was quite different
from the norm. As Mary wrote later:
‘I think my engagement must have been unlike others. We were never
alone, either my Mother or brothers accompanied us wherever we went,
and I remember, on one only occasion, Godfrey offered me his arm and
one of my brothers said, "Mary must be ill to take Godfrey's arm." This
was the greatest familiarity which took place between us. He was very
holy and I used to think how nice it would be to have a little house to
ourselves and spend our lives in good works. We could be like Our
Lady and Saint Joseph.’
At about this time Godfrey gave Mary a book to keep, called
‘Instructions for Christians of a Timid Conscience who live in the
World’, a translation from the Italian, and inscribed it ‘Mary Potter from
Godfrey King, June 1867’. This is the only surviving example of
Godfrey’s handwriting.
This gift shows that Godfrey was both familiar with and valued the
European approach to Catholicism, which had always emphasized
devotion to the Virgin Mary, and may perhaps have had an influence on
Mary’s later interest in another European text translated into English, ‘A
Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin’ by St Louis Marie
Grignon de Montfort, the devotion of which, after being transformed
through Mary Potter’s mystical experiences, formed the basis of her
own book, ‘The Path of Mary’, and also the Little Company of Mary
itself.
However, Mary and Godfrey’s plans were completely derailed when she
told her confessor and director, Dr Grant, about them. His response is a
pivotal moment in her spiritual journey:
‘he at once said that this was not my vocation and that I was to break it
off at once, which I did.’
‘in releasing me from my engagement, he said, "Mary is incapable of
earthly love"’
8
Dr Grant added that Mary was ‘to be a Spouse of Jesus either in the
convent or the world.’
It is very telling how decisively and obediently Mary Potter responded
to Dr Grant’s statements. Elizabeth West writes: ‘she immediately wrote
to her fiancé, telling him of what had happened, and calling the
engagement off’ (Elizabeth West, p.15). Clearly Mary did not feel up to
telling Godfrey in person. And Godfrey reacted in a very
uncharacteristic way by actually turning up at 8am at the Potter
household one morning, to try to persuade Mary to change her mind.
Apparently, Mary would not even see him. So the break was indeed
very decisive and final.
It appears that Mary’s initial choice, given Dr Grant’s two options for
her, was to try to live as a Spouse of Jesus in the world. She increased
her devotional practices to such an extent that she was considered ‘very
holy’ and ‘a saint’ by some in the community.
But this level of enthusiasm was thought excessive by her family, and
they went as far as to complain to the bishop about it. Even the parish
priest of Portsmouth, Father Horan, was worried by Mary’s ‘profligate
alms-giving and her excessive ardour for things religious’ (Elizabeth
West, p.18). One way the family reacted to this was by locking up their
belongings to prevent Mary giving them away, and controlling her
access to any money.
Gradually Mary began to consider Dr Grant’s other option, to live as a
Spouse of Jesus in a convent. He introduced her to a Redemptorist
priest, Father Peter Burke, to help her with this decision. Father Burke
provided her with information about the different active and
contemplative orders.
As a consequence of this, Mary felt that the contemplative life of the
Carmelite community was the right choice for her. She later wrote:
9
‘such a strong light came to me that that was the one I must go to, that
contrary to my usual custom of not troubling Priests out of time, I
believe I went down to Portsea the same day to speak about it.’
However, Father Burke considered that Mary was more suited to an
active order, and Dr Grant had decided that she should visit the Sisters
of Mercy in Brighton, just along the coast from Portsmouth, to see what
convent life was like. This is strange given that Mary had expressed a
dislike of that order when she had read about it. But it may be that
because of Mary’s lack of wealth and her lower socio-economic status,
Father Burke and Dr Grant considered that a contemplative order was
not an option for her, since someone entering such an order usually
required a dowry and generally came from a higher social class than the
Potter family belonged to.
It is therefore very surprising that not only did Mary Potter agree to go
to look at the Sisters of Mercy in Brighton, but on the very next day,
December 8, 1868, she was actually received into the Sisters of Mercy
as a postulant. Equally unexpected was that eight months later, on 30
July 1869, she went a step further and became a novice. There was even
a lengthy report in a local newspaper of her clothing, referring to the
postulant as ‘a Miss Potter of London.’
But as Elizabeth West writes: ‘No records exist of the precise details of
Potter’s spiritual development in the time of her novitiate’ (Elizabeth
West, p.28), and the accounts of her stay at the Sisters of Mercy are in
some ways conflicting.
Mary herself later wrote of this period in her life:
‘I felt likewise the thought pressing upon me it was God's Will I should
be a nun, though I still did not wish it. In fact, upon my telling my
mother my thought and her then telling me she had solemnly years
before offered me to Our Lady as a nun, I felt I wished she had not.
Finally, after a hard struggle, I gave up all earthly love and in doing that
gave up my very nature, so much so that when I went to the Convent
they wondered that I took everything so easily, that nothing was
10
difficult to me (except speaking about myself) but the fact was, I had
done everything before I went in, in giving up my engagement etc.’
‘God bless those good nuns, who raised my idea of a nun… by living
with them, my idea was not lowered but exalted, and though more than
30 years ago, I look back with the same love and reverence.’
Mary Potter’s time with the Sisters of Mercy clearly provided her with a
strong basis for her future life of prayer. But it is also true that Mary had
experienced problems with praying in the way that the Sisters of Mercy
rule required, and the Annals of the St. Joseph’s Convent of Mercy,
Brighton record that ‘her mind was weak and she was nervous and
imaginative’. The idea that a more contemplative order might suit Mary
better also now unsettled her: she feared that she ‘might have to have
high states of prayer and I did not want to. I have had such a dislike to
anything out of the ordinary.’
Perhaps not surprisingly, with such tension and uncertainty about her
vocation, Mary Potter’s health broke down and it was decided she
should leave the Sisters of Mercy and return home to recuperate. She
left on 23 June, 1870.
But this left Mary in a very difficult position. One of the outcomes of
her time at the Sisters of Mercy was that the majority of the community
(but not the Mother Superior: she said that Mary had ‘neither health nor
capacities for a religious life’ – reported in a letter from Thomas Potter
to Mother M. Cecilia, October 12, 1902 – original not yet located)
considered that she did have a genuine call to the religious life, just not
as a member of its particular order. And perhaps even more importantly,
the Jesuit spiritual director for the community, Father George Lambert,
had, as Mary later wrote, told her that ‘a certain union with our Lord
I was afraid was a delusion, was not.’
This idea of possible delusion was to play a huge part in her later
relationship with Monsignor Virtue.
11
But Mary’s mother saw things very differently. As she later wrote about
Mary’s time at the Sisters of Mercy:
‘What I felt at our long separation I never troubled her with, nor even
prayed for her return. But the good God restored her to me even as He
did the young Isaac to Abraham. She was a year and a half at the
convent. I consider she was given back to me, so, God helping me, not
again will I part with her.’ (Letter written by Mrs Potter to Father
Selley, dated 12 June, 1876) – not yet located, Mrs Potter’s handwriting
is difficult to read)
Just as significant for Mary at this time was the loss of her confessor
and director, Dr Grant. He had died suddenly in Rome a few weeks
before Mary left the Sisters of Mercy. It meant that she was now in the
position of having had her sense of religious calling confirmed, but that
the person who had set her on this path and so far guided her was now
gone, and that her mother was opposed to her ever trying convent life
again.
12
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
13
The period between returning home from the Sisters of Mercy in the
middle of 1870, and suddenly taking the train up to Nottingham at the
beginning of 1877, must surely rank as the most spiritually important
time in Mary Potter’s life.
It’s during these six and a half years that Mary Potter, amid much
physical and mental suffering, comes to believe that she has received a
calling from God, and gradually reaches an understanding of what that
calling is.
She undoubtedly comes close to mental breakdown during the period
when her spiritual director is telling her to dismiss as delusion what she
feels, even after struggling not to, she is only able to see as genuine
communication from God (‘when I try to force myself to believe it is all
the work of the devil, I seem to be resisting God and it is something
terrible.’. And her attempt to be obedient to her director’s wish causes
her spiritual anguish of the most extreme kind:
‘I am sure I do not exaggerate when I say my soul has gone through a
Crucifixion and have I not had a share in Our Lord’s Passion?’ (Mary
Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no. 8)
‘My own heart has seemed ready to break, but Our Lady helped me so
that I could ask Almighty God not to ease me, if my grief could help a
soul in agony’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter
no. 10)
‘I do not know how I can go on, as at present, mind or body must give
way.’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no. 13)
At one point Mary becomes so ill that she believes she is about to die,
and that God may be asking her to lay down her life so that the plan He
has revealed to her can proceed. In preparation, she writes a record of
what God has told her, to be opened after her death, and addresses it to a
priest who she hopes will carry on the work.
14
This, perhaps more than anything, demonstrates how unconcerned with
her own ego she felt the plans God had revealed to her were, to the
extent that she at this time believed that her continued life would no
longer be required for their fulfilment; in fact, that the exact opposite the end of her life – was what was needed.
And yet it would be completely wrong to think that Mary Potter wanted
this suffering to end. She believed it was extremely important to suffer,
for what it taught her and for the help it could give to other sinners, and
during these really desperate times she was in fact asking her director
for even more suffering:
‘I must bring up myself to ask you if you could think of any penance for
me, I would be very grateful’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John Virtue,
no date, letter no. 1)
‘I must ask you again, when you think it well, to let me do some more
penance. I do like to suffer and I do suffer.’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor
John Virtue, no date, letter no. 9)
‘Do you not think I ought to have some severe penance for all this; will
you not impose some upon me?’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John
Virtue, no date, letter no. 13)
And it is equally important to stress that during these painful times
Mary Potter was simultaneously experiencing extreme joy, peace and
contentment.
‘I must say that though I suffer, it seems at times, as far as I can bear, I
am not left without consolation, in fact I cannot say I was miserable, nor
would I exchange the present time for any other of my life, for it is a
great happiness to be allowed to love God and to know that He is
happy’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no. 15)
‘You must not think I am always in the state I have said, for
notwithstanding that my heart seems breaking, there is a certain peace
within me, which seems to come from the Presence of Our Lord,
15
helping me to suffer what I otherwise could not.’ (Mary Potter to
Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no. 16)
In particular, the occasions on which she felt united with God produced
a great amount of joy:
‘God’s visit to me left such indescribable joy, not momentary, but the
whole aspect of the world had changed, it seemed like a partial return to
the joy breathed into this world ere the fall.’
Mary also makes the very important point that she is not wallowing in
suffering, or encouraging a kind of suffering that would be
counterproductive or without purpose:
‘I do not give way selfishly to grief, if you understand, make others
uncomfortable, make myself ill by not eating which I could have felt
inclined to do. I thought that would be going against God’s will’ (Mary
Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no. 15)
Prayer during this time was essential for Mary:
‘In times of illness I would pray almost continuously and be fresher at
the end of the day than the beginning. Months have gone on with greater
part of the day spent in prayer.’
Looking back on this period later in life, Mary wrote:
‘During this time of sorrow I had only occasionally bodily suffering. At
times I would think it would be a relief if my body was in pain, it might
distract me from the fearful anguish of soul, which nevertheless I bore
without showing and did my few duties, which consisted mostly in
going out for walks with my mother and brothers, listening to them,
singing and playing, mending their socks and so on, so I had hours to
myself in the day and used to come down from my room, as if nothing
was going on within me.’
16
‘I sought comfort from no one, confided in no one. I have never thought
in trouble that anyone could comfort me but God. My mother never
pressed for my confidence, never alluded if she noticed anything, but
once or twice she did drop some words as though she read my state of
mind’
Mary Potter hid her anguish so well that those around her clearly
thought she was still the happy, carefree girl she had always appeared.
One of the LCM’s Sisters, Mother Cecilia Smith, who was still a child
at this time, later recalled that:
‘Miss Potter was a great musician, and it often happened when the
organist did not appear she was called upon to play the Mass or
Benediction, we school children were, or course, invited up to sing. Her
whole heart and soul seemed in the organ, she made it speak … She had
a lovely voice, and in the month of May Processions, one could hear her
singing all the time.’
Mary Potter described her mystical experiences, which took place over a
period of months, in a wide variety of ways. She writes about God
‘making known’ (Virtue letter no.3) certain things to her, about ‘God
[making] His Will known to me’ (Selley letter no. 2), about ‘God’s
manifestations’ (Autobiographical Notes), about ‘revelation[s]’ (Virtue
letter no. 1), ‘inspirations’ (Autobiographical Notes); that certain words
‘seemed spoken’ (Selley letter no.1), that she ‘found the words rising
up’ (Virtue letter no. 3) in her, that God ‘seemed to speak’ (Selley letter
no. 1) to her; about ‘an echo’ (Virtue letter no. 3) in her heart, about an
‘interior voice’ (Virtue letter no. 10), about an ‘echo of [Our Lady’s]
voice’ (Virtue letter no. 3), about God ‘call[ing]’ (Virtue letter no. 6)
her.
She writes of being in the ‘presence of God’ (Virtue letter no. 3) on
these occasions, of ‘Our Lord … upon the Cross … binding me to
Himself’ (Virtue letter no. 5), of ‘union with God’ (Selley letter no. 1),
of ‘God’s Visits and … wonderful favours’ (Autobiographical Notes),
of ‘Our Lord … inebriating me with His Precious Blood’ (Selley letter
no. 1), of ‘Our Lady’s Heart being within me’ (Virtue letter no. 1), of
17
being given ‘a great grace’ (Virtue letter no. 1), and that ‘God has put
His Holy Spirit upon me’ (Virtue letter no. 5).
One problem for Mary was that she accepted that the words she heard
spoken could be interpreted in different ways. So beyond wondering if
she had heard the words correctly, she could also wonder if she had
understood them properly. She accepted the real possibility of an ‘evil
spirit’ (Virtue letters passim) or ‘the devil’ (Virtue letters passim)
putting these thoughts into her head. She even wondered if she might be
‘possessed’ (Virtue letters passim). Less troubling, but equally
problematic, the thoughts might simply the result of her ‘imagination’:
‘My imagination certainly deceived me regarding the meaning of certain
things I believed said to me’ (Virtue letter no. 8)
‘we can misunderstand Our Lord’s Words, even as the Apostles
did…we need the Holy Spirit to show us their meaning. I have read of
Saints having revelations true in themselves, which they
misinterpreted.’ (Selley letter no. 8)
‘Almighty God’s Spirit would not cause the anguish I had only last
week, when I seemed to wrestle in very agony with the thought, how did
I know I was not possessed by an evil spirit…It might have been the
devil speaking, and my pain seemed to reach a point that could go no
further, and I cried “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me”.’ (Virtue
letter no. 10)
Mary spent much time struggling with these difficulties, and hoped that
Monsignor Virtue would guide her to a proper understanding. But his
eventual response was in fact the worst possible from Mary’s point of
view: he dismissed the experiences wholesale; it was all delusion. And
not only that, he told Mary that if she continued to believe in their
veracity, or even tried to distinguish between what was true and what
was false, she would be committing a mortal sin.
18
But looking back on this time later in life, Mary wrote:
‘God visited my room with a series of marvels and simple as I was,
unread in mystical theology or even ordinary writings upon devotion,
still I knew that God’s manifestation to me meant something great,
something indeed of moment.’
For at least a year after Mary Potter returned home from the Sisters of
Mercy she was ‘a complete invalid’ (Eve Healy, p.41) and very much
confined to the house. She spent many hours in her own room, which
had a ‘shrine of the Sacred Heart and of the Blessed Virgin’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.33), and also in the downstairs sitting-room, which had a
small ivory crucifix which belonged to her mother.
‘My room was to me a sanctuary, and I spent hours in prayer when
those of the house were out at High Mass or Benediction, which I was
considered too delicate to attend and therefore had these quiet hours in
what to me was a sanctuary.’
She later wrote to Monsignor Virtue that during this time:
‘for months together, I was tempted to despair. I went to bed at night
and rose in the morning with a dull dead weight upon me, that I was not
in God’s grace, and though I loved Him so much, if I died I should not
be with Him.’ (Mary Potter to Monsignor John Virtue, no date, letter no.
15)
It may have been this experience of being very ill and in spiritual
anguish which led Mary Potter around this time to have, as she later
wrote to Father Selley, ‘the thought…that there should be an Order
devoted to the dying’ (Selley letter no. 1). However, she ‘sent it away as
nonsense’ (Selley letter no. 1). Instead, as her strength gradually
returned, she began to make visits to the poor and the sick in her local
neighbourhood.
19
A crucial event in Mary Potter’s spiritual journey occurred during this
period. As she later wrote to Father Selley, she ‘had been praying for
some book to do me good and this came’ (Selley letter no. 20). It was
‘A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin’ by St Louis
Marie Grignon de Montfort, a hundred-year old French text which had
recently been translated into English by Father Faber. What is surprising
is that Mary initially took a dislike to it, but decided to persevere with it
after seeing the list of eminent holy men who vouched for it. She writes
that she ‘prayed about it for many months’ (Selley letter no. 20), and the
transformation in her understanding of it and enthusiasm for it was so
great that she decided to make the Act of Consecration to Jesus through
Mary which it recommended.
It was the devotion to the Virgin Mary which this treatise advocated that
seems to have made such a profound difference to Mary Potter’s
spiritual life. She later explained that it was ‘the devotion practised by
Our Lord Himself’ (The Path of Mary, p.8), who had ‘[given] Himself
to Mary, and [become] her Son’ (The Path of Mary, p.8). In her womb,
He had ‘depended wholly upon her’ (The Path of Mary, p.9). Likewise,
Mary Potter wrote that ‘I would have you, after the example of Jesus,
give yourself entirely to Mary. I would have you born again by her.’
(The Path of Mary, p.9)
‘You give yourself entirely to Our Lady; body, soul, and all, once and
for all, and depend on her as Jesus did.’ (Selley letter no. 4)
She told Monsignor Virtue that it was upon ‘True Devotion’ that her
‘spiritual life [was] formed’ (Virtue letter no. 17).
And to Father Selley she wrote ‘I’ve such confidence in the devotion
that, give me a soul that is willing to embrace it, (I do not even say like
it. I did not like it myself first, but trusting to the opinion of such holy
men and after long prayer I embraced it) no matter what may be the
defects of that soul, it will be entirely changed.’ (Selley letter no. 4)
20
However, Mary Potter’s understanding of this devotion continued to
deepen and change in the years after her initial act of consecration,
particularly in the light of the mystical experiences she lived through in
the years 1874 and 1875. She later wrote that prior to that time she had
‘practised the devotion without any sensible feeling’ (Selley letter no.
20). Despite ‘[knowing] its value and [spreading] it’ (Selley letter no.
20), she says that nevertheless she had ‘never really entered into its
spirit’ (Selley letter no. 20) in the period before her mystical
experiences.
Mary Potter described these crucial mystical experiences in a series of
letters she wrote to Monsignor Virtue. He was the recently appointed
military chaplain for Portsmouth. He lived very near the Potters’ house,
and Mary went regularly to him for confession. She had sought his
permission to make her ‘True Devotion’ act of consecration, and he had
encouraged her to set up a school to teach local children, which she did
with the help of her mother in their house.
However, when it came to talking to Monsignor Virtue about the
mystical experiences she began to have she found that it was difficult to
express herself out loud, and so chose to write down what she wanted to
say, or felt she had to say, in letters which she gave to Monsignor Virtue
between her visits to him in confession.
Unfortunately, none of these letters is dated, and Monsignor Virtue it
seems chose always to reply through the confessional, so that
reconstructing both sides of the conversation, and the correct sequence
of events, can be difficult. But there can be no doubt about the huge
importance which Mary Potter placed on what was written in these
letters. She later wrote that they ‘show so clearly that this matter is
God's work, not mine’ (Selley letter no. 2), that ‘anyone reading the
letters would see that I was under the influence of something superior to
myself’ (Selley letter no. 2), and that ‘they would see that the plan that
was developed bit by bit was quite above my imagination’ (Selley letter
no. 2). She stresses that she ‘did not know what was coming’ from week
to week (Selley letter no. 2).
21
As Patrick Dougherty writes: ‘[Mary] Potter…always considered the
letters she had written to Monsignor Virtue between 1874 and 1876 to
be the most important ever to come from her pen’ (p.158).
‘Written…week by week, as her life’s vocation became clear to her,
these letters are the safest foundation of any true understanding of the
origin of the Little Company of Mary’ (p.160)
Just as significantly, although Monsignor Virtue refused to return the
letters to Mary Potter when she asked for them, and despite believing
they contained heretical views, he never destroyed them. He eventually
gave them to the College of Propaganda Fide in Rome, where they still
remain today.
The letters clearly span a period of several months, and show Mary
Potter recording both what her mystical experiences felt like, and the
words and phrases which she heard said to her. Many of these resemble
scriptural verses – such as ‘I have chosen thee that thou shouldst go and
should bring forth fruit and that thy fruit should remain’ (Virtue letter
no. 3) – and Mary often finds it puzzling to know quite how they should
be understood. In her letters to Monsignor Virtue she struggles to make
sense of the experiences, trying to make a coherent whole of what she
has heard on separate occasions, for example:
‘After finishing the whole Rosary the other day Mary my Mother, the
Mother of my Jesus (it is Jesus within me loves Mary so much) said, “ I
have given you your heart’s desire.” I did not know what it referred to.
Now I think it referred to the Precious Blood’ (Virtue letter no. 1)
Even when she thinks she has come to some sort of understanding, she
is often still doubtful, and frequently records hearing reassurance such
as ‘You may believe it’ (Virtue letter no. 1). She struggles with the
feeling that she is not worthy to be an instrument of God’s plans, but
receives the reassurance ‘The weak things of this earth I have chosen’
(Virtue letter no. 3), and argues that this makes sense since it will
emphasize God’s own part in anything the ‘weak things’ are able to do.
22
What causes Mary Potter the worst anguish is when Monsignor Virtue,
after initially appearing both sympathetic to ‘True Devotion’, and at
least curious about Mary’s experiences, apparently tells her that ‘True
Devotion’ is ‘almost condemned by the Church’ (Virtue letter no. 2),
that ‘[her] mind [is not] in conformity with the Church’ (Virtue letter
no. 10), that she ‘must not think [she] had had a revelation’ (Virtue
letter no. 1), that she was ‘not in [her] right state of mind’ (Virtue letter
no. 8), that she must stop ‘prophesying’ (Virtue letter no. 8), and ‘to put
it all away, nothing will come of that’ (Virtue letter no. 2). Even worse,
if she carries on as she has been doing it will not only be contrary to
obedience, but also a mortal sin.
Why did Monsignor Virtue react in this way? Mary herself thought that
he had never properly read ‘True Devotion’ when he initially approved
of it, and only grew concerned once she started to elaborate on it.
Another possibility is that at that time there was a general wariness
about women having mystical experiences. Bishop Ullathorne, for
example, had urged ‘extremest caution with respect to females, who are
liable to mistake imagination for revelations’ (Elizabeth West, p.44).
Monsignor Virtue also, it seems, sought advice from a Jesuit priest, but
the priest it appears came to the same conclusion.
This was one of the worst periods for Mary. She found she was unable
to stop the thoughts coming, which Monsignor Virtue had forbidden,
and the fact that she was both disobeying him and at risk of mortal sin,
caused her great anguish. She used all her considerable skill in logic and
reasoning to try to reconcile her experiences with Monsignor Virtue’s
edict, and to try to rescue some truth from the experiences she had been
having, but Monsignor Virtue seemingly maintained his now wholesale
condemnation of them.
One of the most detailed accounts of these mystical experiences occurs
in the third letter Mary wrote to Monsignor Virtue:
‘Friday evening I had said my rosary … when suddenly I felt the
Presence of God. I was kneeling at my Altar where Our Blessed Lord
had lately been and where I have a lamp burning before an image of the
23
Sacred Heart. I know not what I did till I found the words rising up,
“Who art Thou, Lord?” In my heart seemed to echo “The Blessed
Trinity Who made thee, I have chosen thee that thou shouldst go and
should bring forth fruit and that thy fruit should remain.” “Why me?”
rose up within me, and the same echo within, “The weak things of this
earth I have chosen.” I do not remember exactly what followed nor the
answer which I made, “As Thou hast said to thy servant so be it done.” I
remember turning to Our Lady, making a Spiritual Communion, I was
so afraid of being deluded. Remembering what I had heard that the devil
could not come within the vista of a blessed candle, I lit a particular
candle that had been given me. I know not how long I remained but I
rose with a feeling of inexpressible peace. I went through the devotion
of the Stations which I had been about commencing with an
indulgenced Crucifix, and at every Gloria Patri, I was bowing to the
presence of God in my room with me.
‘The next day, after Holy Communion, having said the Magnificat with
Our Lady, offering Our Lord as I do as my worship to God, the words
came again “I have chosen thee.” On my return home I opened a book
whilst breakfasting (alone) and read till something was said of Our
Lady’s patronage of the dying and then all my love for her or rather
greater love than ever, came up within me and in the midst of my prayer
an echo of her voice seemed to come to me, “It is my will that you
should do this work,” and again I think the word “I have chosen thee
and my question “Why to me?” and the answer “the weak things of this
world and the poor.” I knelt and prayed I know not how long.’
In a later letter to Monsignor Virtue Mary referred to the Friday evening
mentioned above as ‘the Friday evening God called me’ (Virtue letter
no. 6).
Mary was by this time convinced that prayer for the dying was to be an
essential part of her life’s work:
‘Since Rosary Sunday I have been drawn so strongly to pray for the
dying, that I believe it to be a work appointed for me, so much so that
24
(unless I was told) I could not enter a Convent unless they were directed
to that purpose, perpetual prayer for the Dying’ (Virtue letter no. 3)
She also believed that God intended there to be an Order devoted to this
work - the work of ‘rescuing sinners (the souls whom He loves, for
whom He died) at the very last hour’ (Virtue letter no. 3):
‘It is some two or three years since the thought came to my mind how
much such an Order was needed…There may be such an Order raised
up and I might join them. You may tell me I am deluding myself, but
God is renewing every grace within me and giving me His peace that it
seems can never be taken from me. I will try to put away whatever
thoughts you tell me. Almighty God does not need me to do any work
He wishes. I believe He is speaking to me and telling me it is the “desire
and wish of His Heart” but His desire must likewise be that I act under
obedience.’ (Virtue letter no. 3)
Mary Potter had come to see the Religious Orders which had been
founded down the centuries as following a very particular pattern. She
believed that they expressed the consecutive stages of Christ’s life.
From this perspective, the fact that one of the most recent Orders
represented Gethsemane suggested that the next Order would take
Calvary as its model. This idea was reinforced by Mary Potter’s belief
that the Church itself was currently undergoing a crucifixion. And she
saw the role of the Virgin Mary at Jesus’ crucifixion as indicating what
the spirit of an Order with Calvary as its model should be:
‘At the time of the Passion of Our Lord…who, I ask you, were the
faithful ones that continued with Our Lord to the end?...Those who
remained in the company of Mary. Whence had they this great grace?
From her all powerful intercession.’ (The Path of Mary, p.7)
‘It does likewise seem to me that an Order devoted or with the spirit of
Calvary, is peculiarly applicable to these times. Is not the Church being
now mystically crucified with her Lord?’ (Virtue letter no. 2)
25
A very important aspect of the Virgin Mary’s role during Calvary, was
that she was physically present at the side of Jesus as he was crucified
and died.
‘I cannot but feel I have had a call from God to devote myself to help
save souls in their last hour and though I would go to the Order thus
devoted, if I were told, my own attraction would be to assist in person at
the death of others as Our Lady on Calvary’ (Virtue letter no. 2)
‘I would go to any order however strict, the more enclosed from the
world the better, for with the exception of watching those dying I do not
want to have anything to do with the world. I should like to be present at
the death of others. There is something so beautiful about death, but of
course it is not what we like, but what is God’s Will, but I could pray
for them.’ (Virtue letter no. 2)
However, all this was now conclusively dismissed by Monsignor Virtue.
Instead, around the time that Mary Potter appeared to have reached a
complete impasse with Monsignor Virtue, she learnt of a different priest
who could perhaps be a help to her. The news came from a servant girl
called Mary Fulker, who had worked in the Potter household before
being dismissed for her ‘violent temper’ (letter written by Mrs Potter to
Father Selley, dated 11 July, 1876 – not yet located) by Mrs Potter, after
which she had moved to London. Mary Fulker and Mary Potter had
been good friends, and the former told the latter about a Marist priest
called Father Selley who worked at St Anne’s in Spitalfields, near to
where Mary Fulker was now living, describing him as ‘a Saint and a
Director out of a thousand’ (Virtue letter no. 17).
Mary was reluctant to break with Monsignor Virtue, despite their
differences, probably because she was under obedience to him, which
she always took very seriously, but when she learnt that he was to be
transferred to Malta this seems to have decided her that he was not
meant to be her director after all.
26
She wrote what she thought would be her last letter to Monsignor
Virtue, ‘at any rate for a long time’ (Virtue letter no. 17), telling him
that the new priest she had met had written to her: ‘ “I feel strongly
convinced that Almighty God is calling you to do a great work and
supply a great need. As a missionary Priest (he is a Religious also) I
only wish I had some such helps in attending the death bed etc.” He has
promised help in every way.’ (Virtue letter no. 17)
Because Monsignor Virtue still refused to return Mary’s letters to her,
the summary of her recent spiritual development which she wrote for
Father Selley, is perhaps the best description of the position she had
now reached:
‘In the hopes of obtaining a friend to a work of God now in its infancy, I
write to tell you as briefly as I can what it is.
‘It is years since the thought occurred to me that there should be an
Order devoted to the dying. I sent it away as nonsense. Again the year
before last I believe it was shown me directly from God that it was a
work I had to do. All I could tell my Director about it was that its spirit
and model would be Calvary.
‘On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lord seemed to speak
to me after Holy Communion, "Honour the Heart of my Mother" and
like God's Words it was likewise a work, for since that time I seem
rather to live by Our Lady's Heart than my own. It was a new devotion
to me and the peace and thanksgiving it brought I cannot say. God
knows how I have been pouring myself out in prayer to save the dying,
and now it seemed that God had given me a wonderful efficacious
means of praying. That it was His Will we should set before Him, from
out this fallen world, the Mother Heart of Our Lady pleading for her
children, especially those who have greatest need - the dying. I began
then to pray in union with the Heart that gave Our Lord His Life, (The
Precious Blood that redeemed us) the Heart that suffered so grievously
on Calvary.’ (Virtue letter no. 1)
27
What is particularly significant here is the transformation which hearing
the words ‘Honour the Heart of my Mother’ made to Mary’s
understanding of her devotion to the Virgin Mary and her prayers for
the dying. It appears that from this time on these two central aspects of
her spiritual life were bound together, and that it was the specifically
maternal role of the Virgin Mary, as demonstrated on Calvary, which
was the model to emulate in prayer for the dying. The example of how a
mother will do anything to help her sick child is one which Mary returns
to again and again from this point on.
‘A mother’s help exceeds all others. There is nothing like it.’
In this first letter to Father Selley Mary also told him that she had seen
Dr Danell, the Bishop of Southwark, to talk about her plans, and that he
had encouraged her:
‘I saw the Bishop who was very kind to me, said I might influence
others to join me in devotion to the dying, that we might hold meetings.
We might even take a house and live together under a rule, visiting
cases pointed out to us. He told me the prayers we might use,
mentioning one he himself said every day, and he said we might see him
again. One thing he distinctly said, and that was, the word Order was
not to be mentioned amongst us.’
This stipulation about not using the word ‘Order’, which Mary possibly
did not fully understand the reason for or the full implication of, was
something that went on to become quite a problem for her. That she had
already spoken about an Order earlier in this very letter underlines the
fact that she was not fully aware of the dangers ahead.
Mary’s brother Thomas helpfully suggested that if he and his wife
bought another house, Mary could use their present one for her
purposes. She wrote to Mary Fulker about the plan:
‘I hope within a month or two to have this house as my own to open a
school on a larger scale than I can at present, and with others to live
together under a certain rule, the principal of which will be to honour
28
the Maternal Heart of Our Lady, to work, pray and suffer in union with
It and to assist the dying. I hope likewise that I may have a chapel in the
house….The school is not part of the idea, it is our means of living.’
(Mary Potter to Mary Fulker, letter no. 3, June 1876 – not yet located)
To Father Selley she also explained the idea:
‘Our plan of life will be very simple. Until I myself have a guide to
consult upon the penances, exterior practices, etc. I think it would be
better to confine ourselves to the forming the interior spirit which will
be the imitation of Our Lady…I shall content myself with striving, by
God’s help to induce them to have a devotion to our Lady that they may
never have had before. Likewise to desire to devote themselves to
saving souls, to do Our Lady’s work of assisting the dying.’ (Selley
letter no. 4)
While Father Selley was enthusiastic about Mary’s plans – he even held
meetings so that potential recruits to Mary’s cause could get to know
each other - unfortunately most of her family were not. Her mother in
particular was opposed to her ideas, and could not understand why Mary
had not taken up Godfrey King’s renewed offer of marriage. The
tension in the family home was great, and her brothers began to think
that their sister’s religious aspirations were causing too much trouble.
They were likewise worried that she might simply make herself ill
again. Inevitably, gossip about what might be going on with Mary Potter
began to spread.
The main problem however, as Mary pointed out to Father Selley, was
her mother’s opposition. And when Mary did succeed in making it to
London to discuss her ideas further with Father Selley, Mrs Potter
became so upset that she wrote desperately pleading letters both to
Mary:
‘My Dear Child, I write to know when you are returning home. Your
continued absence, known to be against my wishes, is giving, I fear,
scandal…come home, come and be my comfort.’ (Mrs Potter to Mary
Potter, letter dated 11 July, 1876 – not yet located)
29
and Father Selley:
‘Is there such hurry for the establishment of the Order that it cannot
wait, and allow an aged, widowed mother, afflicted too, the solace of an
only daughter?’ (Mrs Potter to Father Selley, letter dated 12 July, 1876)
Mrs Potter was indeed, by this time, both deaf and ill.
It was at this very difficult juncture that Mary decided to write to His
Holiness Pope Pius IX himself to seek approval for what she believed
God had told her he wanted. It is another insight into her thinking at that
time:
‘I believe that God showed me His desire that there should be a new
Order in the Church, the spirit and model of which should be Calvary …
the members would be one united body in the Heart of Our Lady and set
before God that sweet Mother Heart, pleading from the fallen world for
her children, especially for those members of the Church who have the
greatest need, the 80,000 who die daily. Plead will Mary’s Own, as she
pleaded on Calvary by the Precious Blood of Jesus then being shed, and
by His Death.
It is for this work of Mary that I beg the approbation and
blessing of Your Holiness …’
Mary also sought support from Cardinal Manning, who was initially
encouraging. But when he heard about the opposition of Mary’s mother,
he decided that Mrs Potter’s needs must take precedence at this time. He
sent a message to Mary saying:
‘If this is of the Holy Ghost – and I am not saying it is not – it will be
(brought to realization): but let Miss Potter go home to her mother now.’
(Patrick Dougherty, p.64)
Other members of Mary’s family were also now expressing their
disapproval of what she was doing. She wrote to Father Selley that
30
‘The brother with whom I live seemed yesterday positively to insist I
must go away, that it was causing uncomfortableness and dissension in
the house’ (Selley letter no. 11)
and two days later her uncle, Mr George Saul, wrote to her complaining
about her ‘wild-goose schemes’ and ‘the anxieties with which you
trouble all those who love you’:
‘I hasten to reply that I will be no party in assisting you in this matter.’
(George Saul to Mary Potter, letter dated August 14, 1876)
And perhaps even more disheartening was the note which arrived at this
time from Bishop Danell:
‘My Dear Miss Potter, In the most positive and decisive manner
possible I forbid you to undertake to found any religious society or
order in my Diocese. I am surprised that, after my clear prohibition
when you called some little time ago, you should have so soon
disobeyed me.’ (Dr Danell to Mary Potter, letter dated 12 August, 1876)
This was the prohibition against the use of the word Order, and as has
been shown, its use by Mary herself at certain times, and the fact that
her mother also was using it in her correspondence, probably meant
others were talking in this way too.
What is perhaps surprising, but also indicative of Mary’s character, is
how calmly she responded to so much opposition. Rather than its
defeating her, she could see how it could all be part of God’s plan. For
example, she viewed her disapproving brothers as ‘God’s instruments to
punish me for my past vanity and self-love, it is very good for me.’
(Selley letter no. 11) Likewise, Bishop Danell’s switch from
encouragement to outright prohibition, was seen as God indicating that
he didn’t want the new order to be established in Bishop Danell’s
dicocese.
Equally surprisingly, Mary Potter’s brother Henry now came to think
that other members of the family had overreacted. He decided to write
31
to both Cardinal Manning and Bishop Danell to say that he believed his
sister’s intentions were good, and in particular that he hoped they would
not prevent the publication of the ‘The Path of Mary’.
Perhaps partly as a result of what she saw as Monsignor Virtue’s
misunderstanding of ‘True Devotion’, Mary had been writing a text to
help explain its value. Father Selley had been helping her revise it, and
the publication of ‘The Path of Mary’ around this time did have an
important impact on Mary Potter’s family’s attitude to her ideas. It was
favourably reviewed in both ‘The Catholic Times’ (Oct. 6, 1876) and
‘The Weekly Register’ (Sept. 30, 1876), and soon afterwards Mary
Potter wrote to Father Selley that:
‘[My mother] is so pleased about the notice in the "Register", made the
remark she did not think her child would have written anything but what
was wishy-washy, as she was "all heart and no head."’ (Selley letter no.
24)
Despite this improvement in Mary’s fortunes, within a few weeks she
became seriously ill again, to such an extent that she came to believe
that her death was what was required for God’s plans to succeed. At this
time she had also lost the help and encouragement of Father Selley,
whose superiors, as well as Bishop Danell and Cardinal Manning, had
told him not to involve himself with Mary’s plans.
She wrote about her sense of her life ending to Mrs Bryan, who was one
of the women Father Selley had introduced her to as interested in
joining Mary’s fledgling group:
‘Perhaps, I shall surprise you when I tell you that it seems to me that my
death would forward the work. My public part on earth is finished …
This work does not depend on me in the least.’
She also asked Mary Fulker to make a pilgrimage to the London shrine
of Our Lady of La Salette at this time, to ‘ask Our Lady to move the
hindrances that stand in the way of [Our lady’s] work’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.77)
32
Mary wanted to ‘get ready and have things in order, in case of dying
suddenly and without time’ (Letter to Mrs Bryan dated December 1,
1876). She wrote a long letter setting out what God had revealed to her
and giving suggestions of people who could help with the work, which
she addressed to a French priest called Father de Bray, who she had first
written to before writing her letters to Monsignor Virtue, and who she
thought those letters should also have gone to when it became clear how
opposed to her ideas Monsignor Virtue was. This ‘spiritual testament’
(Patrick Dougherty, p.79) she sent to Mrs Bryan with the instructions
that it should only be opened after her death. It begins:
‘As my first letter upon Mary’s Work was to you so shall be the last’
Interestingly, in this letter Mary discusses both the idea that ‘some order
in existence would be willing to devote themselves to this work of
Calvary’, as well as the possibility of ‘a drawing together of several
orders into one’. In other words, at this time she was still not convinced
that a completely new order was required. However, she is certain that
whatever form it takes, everyone ‘must have…the same devotion to Our
Lady, “True Devotion”. It may be her maternal care is providing against
the day of God’s threatened vengeance upon the world.’
Quite how low and despairing Mary was feeling by the end of this
extremely difficult year (1876) is perhaps indicated by the following
sentences in this ‘spiritual testament’:
‘I have appealed in vain to know the mind of Holy Church upon this
work. I die without one consoling word…If I had however any
counselor I would if they wished pray to live, but I have no one. I die
alone. It seems to me I shall complete my work by laying down my life
for it.’
She had only a few days before written to Mrs Bryan
‘These last few days have perhaps been intended by God to put me into
the spirit that He wishes possessed by those who join the work of
Calvary… It may be simply that God wishes me to possess and make
33
known to others this spirit – of constantly offering their death to Him
and yet, like Our Lady on Calvary, not to die.’
Now, however, she seemed to think her death was required.
But of course she didn’t die. And within a short time two events
occurred which seemed to offer a way forward. Firstly, a wealthy
gentleman called Mr Young, who lived in the diocese of Nottingham,
read ‘The Path of Mary’ and wrote offering to provide the funds for
Mary to establish the community she was planning in his parish.
Secondly, at almost the same, Mary’s brother George told her that he
thought the Bishop of Nottingham, Dr Bagshawe, would be willing to
let her establish her community in his diocese.
The sticking point, however, was still the refusal of Mary’s mother to
give her consent. Mary took this very seriously, and wanted if at all
possible to persuade her mother to allow her to leave home. One very
important recent change in the Potter household was that her brother
Thomas had got married, to a French woman called Marguerite
Faveraux. This meant that Mary’s mother now had someone else who
could look after her. But Mary still wrestled with the problem of
whether it would be right to go against her mother’s wishes. Even much
later in life she was still wondering whether what she did was correct:
‘Did I do right, I have sometimes thought, to leave without her blessing
and consent? Should I not have saved much if I had waited until she had
given consent and then gone straight as I wished to Pope Pius - rather
than to Nottingham?’
Instead, Mary decided that her mother’s wishes couldn’t take
precedence in this instance, and it was while returning from a trip to
Brighton in the new year with her sister-in-law Marguerite, that she
found the courage to suddenly take the train to London, with the
intention of then going to Nottingham to see Bishop Bagshawe, rather
than return home.
34
JOURNEY TO HYSON GREEN –
CREATING THE LCM
35
The five years Mary Potter spent in Nottingham between her arrival in
1877 and her departure for Rome in 1882, illustrate the many practical
decisions and difficulties she faced in trying to establish the very
specific Congregation which she believed God had shown her He
wanted.
Her continuing difficulty during this time was to ensure that in making
the idea of the new Congregation a reality, the challenges a particular
place and a particular group of people presented didn’t result in the loss
of the Congregation’s unique spirit - or, indeed, prevent its proper
formation in the first place. It was the very real struggle to stay true to
the Congregation’s founding vision that eventually led Mary Potter in
1882 to seek help from the Holy See in Rome.
Mary Potter was very aware that the birth of this new Congregation
would be difficult in its human and practical implications. As she wrote
to Mrs Bryan:
‘I do not wish to make a grand start or probably there would be a grand
failure…I do not think this will fall through eventually, but I fancy there
will be disagreements at the commencement.’
In fact, Mary Potter continually chose to see the difficulties that ensued
as essential for ensuring the correct spirit among members of the new
Congregation:
‘[God], no doubt, permits difficulties, for without them how could we
imitate Our Lady on Calvary and her peace and patience under trying
circumstances?’
‘I have an idea Our Lord wishes us to imitate His Mother by giving us
trying circumstances, that He may perfect our peace and patience; these
are not perfect until tried.’
36
But she was by now completely convinced that her call from God was to
establish a new Congregation, and that this alone justified the action she
was taking:
‘It is utterly out of the question my joining any existing Order … Unless
I had believed God had given me a solemn call I should never have left
my home without my mother’s consent. If God has called me to do one
thing, how can I do another?’
However, she never lost sight of the fact that she believed her own role
to be inessential to the eventual creation of such a Congregation:
‘If this Foundation were to fail, another would prosper. If it failed in this
country, it would succeed in another. If it were suppressed in this
century it would arise again in another.’
And the reason for this, as she told Mrs Bryan in the same letter, was
that ‘I do not believe it is a plan of my own but a work of Almighty
God’s’.
Elizabeth West describes the Nottingham Mary Potter encountered in
January 1877 as belonging to ‘one of the largest undermanned dioceses
within the English Catholic church’ (p.79). According to Father
Dougherty, ‘priests and practising Catholics were few’ (p.90). The
Bishop, Dr Edward Bagshawe, had only been in post since 1874 and
was ‘ever anxious to encourage any initiative which might promote
Catholic faith and practice in the territory entrusted to him’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.90). This territory included many ‘poor Irish immigrants
[who] were a major source of concern for the bishop’ (Elizabeth West,
p.79).
There were already two religious communities of women – the Sisters
of Mercy and the Sisters of Nazareth - working in Nottingham when
Mary Potter arrived. Between them they provided help for ‘Aged Poor’,
‘Destitute Children’, servants and orphans, as well as running a school
for girls. Perhaps understandably, Dr Bagshawe thought Mary Potter
37
was proposing a similar community. In fact, as Mary writes in her
account of her first meeting with him, he had thought she wanted to set
up a branch of the Sisters of Bon Secours de Paris.
This account, in a letter to Mrs Bryan, gives a good indication of the
impression Dr Bagshawe made on Mary Potter at this first meeting, and
how she responded to his character:
‘Well, he was rather cold at first, but it had no effect upon me, thank
God. I felt quite at home with him and comfortable. It was a good thing
I came, the matter was in a muddle. He understood we must be directed
by the Marists and I believe were a branch of “Bon Secours” … When I
spoke of not liking to mention the word Order because of Bishop
Danell, the Bishop said I was not in [Bishop Danell’s] Diocese, he,
Bishop Bagshawe, could give me leave to found an Order subject to the
Holy See and if I wanted to why shouldn’t I or something to that effect.
He was chatty and funny too, was in no hurry, wanted to see and hear all
he could, took our rules.’
Another very revealing sentence in this letter is: ‘You must tell Fr
Selley how business-like I have got’. Being business-like is something
Mary felt getting ‘The Path of Mary’ published had brought out in her,
and is perhaps a riposte to her mother’s doubts about Mary’s ability to
handle the finances and practicalities of her venture.
Two key questions for Bishop Bagshawe were who would be joining
Mary Potter in the new Congregation and how they would support
themselves. Mary mentioned Mr Young’s offer of finance, but the
Bishop didn’t hold out much hope for that since he knew Mr Young had
a history of offering support and then withdrawing it when his demands
weren’t met. In fact, Mr Young did withdraw his offer to Mary within a
fortnight of her arrival in Nottingham.
Instead, Dr Bagshawe advised Mary to look for a suitable building in an
area called Hyson Green, about two miles from Nottingham Cathedral.
As Elizabeth West points out, Hyson Green at that time had ‘no church,
no school, no sisters, no priest’ (p.83). The community there had ‘grown
38
up around the expanding lace and stocking frame manufactories of
Nottinghamshire’ (p.82). There were ‘hundred’s of workmen’s
dwellings lining side streets and back streets’ (p.82). The poor were
‘composed principally of Irish and the labouring classes’ (p.83), and the
majority of Hyson Green’s Irish inhabitants were ‘non-practising
members of the church’ (p.83).
Mary Potter describes her first visit to Hyson Green in her
‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘When I first went to Hyson Green … [it] was then a country place and
not next to Nottingham as now…I was directed to Lenton Street and
finally finding a family - a poor Irish woman of the name of Tacey, who
made me very welcome - I asked them if they knew an empty house in
the Green to make a convent and chapel of. They seemed doubtful; she
said there was an old factory but that it was no good as it was a tumbledown place, but I pressed to see it, so we went up the street and entered
a place such as I have never seen before or since. A straight ladder led
to the present chapel and by another a loft was gained above it;
everywhere bricks and broken crockery.’
The building was a disused stocking factory, and two houses had been
knocked into one with a loft running the length of the building. Despite
the poor condition the building was in, Mary clearly saw its potential,
and the following day Bishop Bagshawe inspected it. He himself was
obviously persuaded that it could serve as the ‘proposed convent, chapel
and school’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.97), and ‘offered to pay the rent,
taxes and the cost of furnishing the convent’ (p.97).
A copy of the first lease states:
‘the Right Rev. Edward Gilpin Bagshawe agrees to take the two
messuages or dwelling houses, workshops and buildings with garden
and appurtenances…for the term of one year from the 25th March next
ensuing, at the yearly rent of £33 12 0d. payable quarterly’
39
Shortly after his inspection Bishop Bagshawe gave Mary Potter formal
permission to commence the new Institute, and Mary wrote to let Mrs
Bryan know in a letter dated 4th February 1877. There is another letter in
the archives which also seems to record this decision, apparently from
Bishop Bagshawe, although the handwriting is not Bishop Bagshawe’s,
but appears to be Mary’s:
‘The Cathedral Nottingham, February 7, 1877
Miss Potter and some companions have taken premises at Hyson Green
in which a small chapel and school will be opened for the benefit of that
part of Nottingham. They hope to form themselves eventually into a
religious Institution for nursing the sick etc. Their enterprise has my
cordial approbation.
+ Edward Bp. of Nottingham’
Mary, very daringly, decided to move into the disused factory premises
while they were being restored. As she wrote later in life:
‘Here I was wandering about alone, then sleeping in an old delapidated
place, in the midst of mortar and rubbish of all kinds, with doors that
would not fasten, for I remember putting a pickaxe against it to secure
it. When the Bishop, after some time, came to hear of this he forbade
and I had to go to the Tacey's, but when I found I was expected to sleep
with one of the girls, I laid on the floor, which by that time I had got
quite accustomed to.’
On March 16 Mary again wrote to Mrs Bryan that:
‘[Bishop Bagshawe] has appointed (under obedience) as Superioress my
unworthy self’.
Mary seems to have been genuinely reluctant to take on this position,
and needed convincing by Dr Bagshawe, but once appointed, the first
two women soon arrived to join her. These were Mrs Elizabeth Bryan,
the older widow whom Mary had been writing to, and Mary Bray, ‘who
worked as a domestic at the convent of the Carmelite Sisters in North
40
End, Fulham’ (Elizabeth West, p.90). They both joined Mary at Mrs
Tacey’s, as the building work was still in progress at the factory.
As Elizabeth West points out, ‘By demanding no dowry, Potter offered
women from all ranks of society a place within her congregation, and
her insistence on the basic equality of all members gave opportunity to
those whose class or financial impecunity barred them from entry into
other congregations except as lay sisters.’ (pp.88-9)
‘On Palm Sunday, 25th March,’ writes Father Dougherty, ‘Bishop
Bagshawe announced that on Easter Monday he would solemnly bless
and declare open the Lenton Street convent’ (p.100). There was a lot to
get ready by then, and many people helped – both Catholics and
Protestant supporters. As Elizabeth West records:
‘Canon Douglas of the Nottingham diocese contributed a chalice,
ciborium and vestments, while the superior of the Sisters of Nazareth
helped with the purchase of necessary items … A non-Catholic lent an
organ for the celebration; another volunteered to make the garden ready,
yet another provided roses for the chapel. The daughter of the local
Anglican vicar came to help with the decorations for the opening.’
(p.94)
There was an emphasis on making sure the Chapel on the second floor
was ready for the opening. Father Dougherty gives a description of what
this room looked like:
‘The wooden ceiling soon became a lemon-cream colour, with a
multitude of small stars in gold offering a little variety; the brown of the
lower walls was divided from the grey of the upper section by an
inscription, in large gold letters, which read:
“Adoremus in aeternum.
“Anima Mariae, ut Magnificet Dominum
“Sit in singulis; Spiritus Mariae, ut
“Exsultet in Deo. Sancta, Sancta, Sancta. Mariae Deo”
41
[Translation:
“Let us adore forever.
“Let the soul of Mary be in each of us that it may magnify the
Lord. Let the spirit of Mary (be in us) that it may rejoice in God.
“Holy, Holy, Holy (Mary).
“(Dedicated) to Mary and to God]’ (p.100)
(The middle portion of this is a saying of St Ambrose’s which is quoted
twice in ‘True Devotion’, and also appears in ‘The Path of Mary’.)
Mary also ‘[nailed] unframed Stations of the Cross to the Chapel walls,
and neatly [arranged] leaves around them to make them more attractive’
(p.101). Two statues were ‘placed on small wooden pedestals on either
side of the altar’ (p.101, n.2). One of these was a statue of the Sacred
Heart, but the other was what Mary referred to as ‘the first statue of the
Maternal Heart’ (p.101, n.2). This represented a central aspect of the
new Institute’s spirit (Eve Healy notes it eventually became ‘a special
feature of every convent of the Little Company of Mary throughout the
world’ (p.116)), and Mary described its origin in her ‘Autobiographical
Notes’:
‘At last I arrived at the little shop where an Italian man showed me the
statue [which a supporter was donating], which I did not like. Pointing
to another I said, "Put a heart on that." "But," objected the man, "how
can I put a heart on an Immaculate Conception?" I did not understand
art, so settled the difficulty by letting him know that if he wanted to sell
the statue, he must put the heart, and according to my directions; my
idea being that the Immaculate Heart of Mary has only the lily, but the
Maternal Heart must have the sword of sorrow through it. I believe I
helped to make that man's fortune for, after sending these statues all
over the world, he has retired to his own country, Italy.’
In line with this, Mary requested that the chapel and mission should be
dedicated to the Maternal Heart. But she noted that at the time there was
a lot of opposition ‘to such a novel title.’ However, as she also wrote:
42
‘Hyson Green will ever be the first Sanctuary in God’s Church
dedicated to the Maternal Heart.’
A further prominent feature of the new Convent is described by Father
Dougherty:
‘On Holy Saturday Mary had a large wooden cross placed at the summit
of the convent’s roof. “I painted it myself last night,” she wrote, ‘a
glorious red. It was Good Friday; you may imagine what I was thinking
of.”’ (p.101)
As Eve Healy makes explicit, ‘By this…act Mary linked the cradle of
the Little Company of Mary to the Cross of Calvary’ (p.113)
The opening ceremony on Easter Monday, April 2nd, included ‘the
Children of Mary from the Cathedral [singing] Webbe’s Mass in G’
(p.101) and, during the Exposition, three hymns, including one ‘to “Our
Lady’s Maternal Heart”’ (Eve Healy, p.117), as well as ‘music
composed especially for that day’ (Eve Healy, p.117). Mary Potter
herself played the borrowed organ, and Bishop Bagshawe was assisted
by Father Douglas and Father Burns – a young priest who had only been
ordained the day before, but who moved into the property next door to
the Convent, and was appointed Chaplain to the mission.
After Benediction, the Bishop left the Blessed Sacrament in the
tabernacle (said later to be a silk-lined sewing box Mary Potter had
brought from home), and because of the still unfinished and unsecured
state of the building, the three pioneers – Mary Potter, Mrs Bryan and
Mary Bray – decided to move that night from their lodgings at Mrs
Tacey’s to sleep in the Chapel so that the Blessed Sacrament could be
protected. Elizabeth West writes that ‘Beds were improvised, Potter
sleeping on a straw sack on the floor, whilst the others made their beds
on rough-hewn benches borrowed from the Cathedral for the opening.’
(p.95)
43
At this point a name had still not been chosen for the new Congregation.
‘Mary’s Own’ was one suggestion, but Mary Potter preferred ‘Little
Company of Mary’, and the Bishop decided that that should be the title.
Three more women joined the fledgling Congregation within a few
months after the opening. One was a Miss Mary Thompson, who had
apparently been at another religious order, but she also left the LCM
within two years, and is described in the LCM annals as ‘not too young
and in many ways queer’ (Elizabeth West, p.95). Another was Edith
Coleridge, who was a fully qualified nurse; her professional expertise
was passed on to the other sisters in weekly lectures. And the other was
Mary Potter’s young friend from Portsmouth, Mary Eleanor Smith.
Mary Smith’s later reminiscences provide a very vivid account of what
life in the early days of the LCM were like. She describes arriving in
Nottingham and finding ‘the approach to the convent … rather
disappointing’, but once there ‘all was homelike’. Then:
‘After a good night’s rest I arose, had Mass and Holy Communion, then
later on in the day, Mother [Mary Potter], whose zeal knew no bounds,
took me round the village, to make the acquaintance of a lot of poor sick
people.’
She describes Mary Potter at work:
‘First she washed a poor sick mother, gave her some nourishment, then
washed the children and gave them their breakfast and sent them off to
school, then there was the husband’s dinner to prepare (generally these
men were colliers). She swept the kitchen and left all ready on the stove
for the poor man’s dinner.’
Apparently, ‘These people were nearly all Protestants, but through
[Mary Potter’s] loving kindness, many were converted and became
splendid Catholics’.
44
One particular example she gives of Mary Potter’s approach to this
work illustrates the very distinctive spirit and attitude with which Mary
Potter undertook it:
‘in a very poor alley … up one flight of stairs … we found a young
woman weeping with a newborn infant crying … she said, at once, what
her trouble was, how the baby was too weak to draw milk from her and
would surely die from starvation. Neighbours had said, “Why not get a
breast pump?” but, she said, it cost too much and her husband was only
a poor labouring man. I was only 18 and stood listening, but Mother
went to work, first rubbing very gently the breasts and then to my
astonishment, she bent down and sucked that poor woman’s breast, till
the milk came. The baby was put at once to its fount of life and both
mother and child were happy and contented. I looked at Mother in
wonderment, but felt I could never do such an act.’
Mary Smith noted how Mary Potter ‘loved especially those whom no
one seemed to care for’ and describes how she would even travel four
miles to ‘an old man [who] had not been to the Sacraments for 40 years’
to offer help. As a result, he ‘became a most regular and punctual
Catholic’. The sisters also had to contend with those who had taken ‘a
drop too much’ – who could become aggressive and abusive.
Mary Smith describes the ‘cells’ in which the sisters lived:
‘There were three beds in each, with white curtains round each bed; the
walls were painted blue, the floor was of stone, and there were threelegged washstands, with little tin basins. It was customary to fill these
every night with water, and very often, in the winter mornings, they
were caked over with ice. One of dear Mother’s acts of charity, was to
rise very early, make a fire, and appear with a large can of boiling water
and put a little in each of our basins, to take off the chill, so that we
would not suffer too much. Over each bed there was a crucifix and a
picture of Our Lady, with little holy water stoups.’
45
Mary Potter’s own cell was a:
‘little dark room under the stairs. The only furniture it contained was a
big oldfashioned wooden bedstead, one chair, a large crucifix, a picture
of Our Lord tied to the pillar of the scourging (a favourite one of our
dear Mother) and a little holy water stoup. The wooden bedstead was
the gift of a kind old Irish neighbour, who hearing that Mother was
sleeping on a sack of straw on the floor sent us the bed. A tiny passage
led to it, and the only window opened on to the staircase leading to the
Chapel and usually covered by a white curtain. It was really a “little
dark room” … the poorest corner of the convent.’
Eve Healy, who writes that she visited this room herself, notes that it
was ‘barely eight feet square, and perhaps not quite so high … a kind of
ventilator opening on to the stairs was the only medium of light and air.’
(p.128)
Mary Smith records that ‘Every hour of the day had its appointed duty’,
and describes ‘morning prayers, Meditation … Holy Mass … the house
… put in order … [visiting and tending] the sick of the village … the
School and mission work, hunting up bad Catholics etc.’
In particular:
‘On Fridays there was strict silence from 12 to 3 p.m. and anyone who
broke it without necessity received a penance. Mother established this
custom to help the Dying, in union with Our Lady on Calvary, and
during those three hours she wished us to think of the Seven last Words
of Our Lord compassionating Him, dying on Calvary. At 3 p.m. we
made the Stations of the Cross, but we very often saw Mother making
them several times daily.’
Eve Healy also notes that there was a custom ‘of one Sister each night
being appointed to the special duty of watching and praying for the
dying’ (p.123)
46
After the arrival of the sixth member, Edith Coleridge, in June 1877,
Bishop Bagshawe decided that there would be a public ceremony of
clothing in the religious habit at which all six would be received as
novices of the new Congregation, now christened the Little Company of
Mary.
The clothing day was set for July 2, Feast of the Precious Blood, and
before then a decision had to be made on what the Congregation’s
formal religious habit would be. The young Mary Smith was used as a
mannequin to model the various options, and at first the only point of
agreement was that there should be a blue veil. Dr Bagshawe eventually
approved ‘a black tunic and scapular, a black leather cincture, a rosary
of fifteen decades and a blue veil’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.105). This was
later modified to ‘[a cincture] of red wool (in honour of the Precious
Blood) with five knots (in honour of Our Lord’s Five Wounds). The
Rosary was changed to the less cumbersome one of five decades.’
(p.105, n.5)
Of the day itself, Mary Smith recalls that ‘Six Sisters of Nazareth came
to assist us in arranging our habits. The little Chapel was packed; a good
harmonium had been lent us and the Congregation did the singing.’
Even though food had been prepared, she notes that ‘some of [Bishop
Bagshawe’s] cathedral ladies, generally called his pets … very soon …
ate everything’. However, Mother Philip [Edith Coleridge] came to the
rescue with a cup of tea and later, when they were ‘in our first sleep’,
Mary Potter ‘appeared on the scene with a tray on which were five
glasses of delicious egg flip’.
One other change that took place on this day was that the six novices all
received a new name: Mary Potter became Sister Mary Angela
(although the ‘Angela’ was later dropped), Mrs Bryan became Sister
Mary Elizabeth (although this was later changed to Sister Mary
Magdalen, sometimes written with an ‘e’ on the end), Mary Bray
became Sister Mary Agnes, Mary Smith became Sister Mary Cecilia,
Mary Thompson became Sister Mary Joseph, and Edith Coleridge
became Sister Mary Philip.
47
The reception of the six sisters as novices would undoubtedly have
brought to a head the issue of what exactly their novitiate should consist
in. Father Dougherty points out that ‘at Brighton, Mary had learnt that
the Church required all Religious to spend one year in a novitiate’
(p.106). Mary Potter was in fact the only one of the six novices (apart
perhaps from Mary Thompson) who had first-hand experience of what
this period of religious life entailed, and she was well aware of its
important role in fostering the correct spirit in a sister, providing the
foundational life of prayer which was required, and teaching the
importance of true religious obedience which all religious life was built
on. Eve Healy records that Mary Potter would constantly warn the
sisters: ‘Be Good nuns first, then you’ll be good nurses!’ (p.130).
This emphasis by Mary on the inner spiritual foundation of the life of an
LCM sister relates very much to what Grignon de Montfort wrote in
‘True Devotion’. There he stresses that ‘True devotion to our Lady is
interior; that is to say, it comes from the spirit and the heart’ (p.71); ‘the
essence of this devotion consists in the interior which it ought to form’
(p.81). This second sentence is also quoted in ‘The Path of Mary’.
However, it’s clear that several of the other novices, who had not lived
in a religious community before, were, as Father Dougherty writes,
‘inclined to consider as superfluities what Mary considered the very
essentials of Religious life’ (p.109). For Mary Potter, ‘the whole life of
each Sister should be imbued with the devotion to Mary which, unless
our life is a mockery, we are making Profession of…’ But these other
sisters didn’t realise or accept that ‘to achieve…conformity to the spirit
of the institute, a deep inner life of prayer was necessary’ (Elizabeth
West, p.102). They thought that ‘[Mary’s] ideal of religious life was
both harsh and unreasonable’ (pp.109-10).
Unfortunately for Mary Potter, it appears that Bishop Bagshawe himself
was less concerned with the spiritual foundation of the sisters at this
time than the welfare services they could provide to the poor of his
diocese. He certainly did not share the emphasis, and time, Mary wanted
to devote during the novitiate period to building up the correct spiritual
foundation of the sisters. And it is perhaps this difference of opinion
48
with Mary, combined with the unrest of some of the other sisters, which
led to the very dramatic action he took less than three weeks after the
clothing ceremony. He deposed Mary as superior of the LCM, and
replaced her with Sister Elizabeth.
This began a particularly difficult period for Mary Potter. The tensions
within the community, as well as between the community and the
Bishop, no doubt had an impact on Mary’s health, and it’s possibly not a
coincidence that she also suffered the very serious illness of breast
cancer at this time, undergoing two very risky operations within six
months of each other.
According to Mary Smith’s recollections, Bishop Bagshawe did more
than depose Mary Potter as Superior, he actually ‘[forbid her] to speak
to any of us. He said she could write and say her prayers.’
Clearly the Bishop now wanted Mary Potter to have as little practical
influence on the development of the Congregation as possible.
Understandably, Mary found this sidelining of her involvement
extremely upsetting. She of course wanted to be obedient to her bishop,
but with her contact with rest of the community so limited, she felt they
were ‘more estranged from me than strangers.’
Unfortunately, this antagonism between Mary Potter’s views and the
Bishop’s over the direction and development of the LCM seems to have
worsened as time went on. In a letter he wrote to her dated August 2,
1878, he made his position very clear:
‘The use that God has made of you in founding the Institute may give
you as much interest in it as you please, but it does not give you any
right to mould it as you like, unless in perfect submission to your
superiors. Tell me your views, but accept and be content with my
decisions.’
49
Even while trying to reassure her, he criticizes her attitude at the same
time:
‘I do not in the least wish to throw you off or get rid of you, but I am
frightened at your reliance on your own judgement, and canonising of
your own opinions as inspirations.’
The Bishop, it seems, had begun to view Mary Potter’s behaviour in a
very sceptical light. He clearly doubted her motivation, and in his letters
to Mary’s replacement as Superioress, Mother Magdalen (previously
Sister Elizabeth), he writes as though Mary was calculatedly behaving
in a way that would get her what she wanted:
‘As for Mother Mary Angela, my impression is that she has a trick of
seeking to have things her own way by petitions, suggestions, argument
etc., in a manner which is often troublesome.’
Equally, Mary herself began to doubt - perhaps in an echo of her earlier
loss of confidence in Monsignor Virtue - whether the Bishop was really
the right person to guide the LCM:
‘I tell you in confidence, there are thoughts in my mind – as I believe
there have been and are in the minds of others – as to whether our
bishop is the one Almighty God has appointed to carry out this work.’
In early 1878 the Bishop had tried to respond to Mary’s desire for more
influence over the spiritual development of the sisters by appointing her
Mistress of Novices – but with one very telling proviso. She was ‘to do
all that a Novice Mistress would do except telling the Sisters of their
faults or listening to their trials and difficulties’ (Patrick Dougherty,
p.110). In other words, the ban on Mary’s having any individual
involvement with a sister’s development remained in place.
50
The Bishop explained this decision by arguing that:
‘Teaching a science is one thing, applying it to individual cases is
another, and a very different one. The first I wished to be done by you,
the second by the Rev. Mother [Sister Magdalen, Mary’s replacement as
Superioress].’
Mary tried to restrict her involvement with the novices to teaching by
‘formal interview’, but soon realised that, in terms of her own
understanding of what proper spiritual formation required, this fell far
short. Unfortunately, the Bishop’s response was that:
‘Since you feel that you cannot do the one without doing the other, it
will be better to do neither, and leave them to be done otherwise.’
The Bishop did, however, ‘[grant] her an hour or so each week to write
her ideas on the spirit of the Little Company’ (Patrick Dougherty,
p.112). Although this was no doubt an unsatisfactory situation from
Mary’s point of view, as Father Dougherty goes on to point out,
‘”Mary’s Conferences”, written at this time…[provide] an excellent
summary of the mission of the Little Company in the Church’ (p.112),
and Elizabeth West describes them as ‘the foundational texts of the
institute’ (p.225, n.231.
Mary Potter’s attempts to shape the development of the LCM were
further thwarted by the arrival of a new member to the fledgling
community called Mrs White. She was sent to Hyson Green by Bishop
Bagshawe, and ‘because of her supposed talents in business matters,
was immediately appointed Bursar’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.112). It seems
that Mrs White not only made life harder for Mary Potter, whom she is
said to have ‘intensely dislike[d]’ (p.114) and ‘treat[ed]…with
contempt’ (p.123), but also for the other members of the community.
Mary Smith later recalled that Mrs White was:
51
‘an extremely aggravating person, about 50…I can never forget her
meanness and severity. She was in so many ways thoroughly unlovable
and unmotherly for some couple of years we had to bear with her.’
And the trouble Mrs White caused seems not to have been an isolated
incident:
‘She was simply impossible and so were many of those whom the
Bishop sent us. At times there were some very stormy scenes.’
What made the situation worse was that a few months after her arrival,
Mrs White was appointed Assistant Superior by the Bishop. This meant
that whenever Mother Magdalen was ill or away, which seems to have
been quite often, Sister Francis (as Mrs White became after her
clothing) was in charge, and so the harsh and unsympathetic way in
which she treated the other sisters seems to have been given full rein.
What is perhaps strange is that Mrs White’s supposed skill in money
matters did not make much impact on the state of the LCM’s finances.
The sisters were often sent out begging, even when unwell, to help
provide the necessary funds.
Unfortunately for Mary Potter, the stresses and strains of community
life at this time also coincided with one of her most serious bouts of
illness. She had been feeling pain in one of her breasts for nearly a year,
but perhaps a combination of her own reticence about it and the
unsympathetic treatment she experienced from Mrs White, meant that
when a doctor was finally called to investigate he found a malignant
growth which needed immediate removal. The operation was actually
carried out in the Convent itself, in what were far from ideal conditions.
Because of Mary Potter’s heart condition she couldn’t be anaesthetised
and so remained conscious throughout. Yet Mother Cecilia remembers
that:
‘The only one amongst us who did not seem sad or worried about it was
[Mary Potter] herself; she was rejoicing that she was going to suffer
something for Our dear Lord.’
52
The subsequent recovery was a difficult period for Mary, and when the
cancer was discovered to have spread to the other breast a few months
later, which meant it also had to be removed, in much the same
circumstances, that could have been too much of a blow for a lot of
people. However, the way in which Mary Potter chooses to describe the
episode in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’ is another insight into her
particular attitude to life’s difficulties:
‘It occurs to me now, how in the early days we always mixed fun in that
which was sorrowful. It must be known that the Bishop forbade us give
anything away and therefore when I went to him with the question,
"Might I dispose of a piece of community property?" he looked doubtful
and put on his considering cap, saying "Tell me, my child, what it is?"
When I told him that Our Lord wanted the other breast, he was too
much distressed to enjoy the joke.’
But this life-threatening series of events had also produced one other
beneficial outcome. As father Dougherty writes, when Mary Potter’s
condition worsened after her first operation:
‘her mother was informed by telegram. The message which Mrs. Potter
dispatched was the first friendly one she had written to her daughter
since Mary came to Nottingham, eighteen months before. And it was to
bring about their reconciliation.’ (p.113)
Despite this long and dangerous period of ill health, Mary Potter
nevertheless continued throughout to try to ensure that there was a
proper spiritual foundation to how the sisters lived and worked. In the
middle of 1878 she wrote to Mother Magdalen with her concerns about:
‘a want of adherence to our own spirit; being a Community, we ought to
have a particular spirit among us. Perhaps we have not been striving for
it.’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.113)
As Father Dougherty points out, Mary Potter ‘insisted that good works
could bear little fruit unless they were based on a spirit of obedience and
prayer’ (p.119). In particular, he warns of the:
53
‘”heresy of action” which eats away the link between prayer and work,
and leads to an ephemeral apostolate, the fruit of superficial enthusiasm
and purely human zeal.’ (p.126)
In other words, however much practical aid the sisters were providing
for the community of Hyson Green – nursing, teaching, supplying food,
etc. – this could not replace the need for a spiritual foundation of prayer,
and indeed without that spiritual foundation, the ‘purely human zeal’
that was carrying the sisters along was unlikely to last.
Mary expressed the same idea in a slightly different way in what is
referred to in the LCM Archives as ‘Primitive Rule of 1876’:
‘Sisters … should have a very deep foundation of religious virtue, or
they might dwindle into mere nurses and the beauty of the true religious
pass from them.’
Likewise, Mary Potter worried that it might be ‘rather personal affection
than true obedience of religious’ which motivated the sisters, as this in
itself could not provide the sort of lasting foundation and way of life
that she felt was required for a community like the LCM.
It seems that the shock of Mary Potter’s first operation and the
realisation of the seriousness of her illness did have the beneficial effect
of drawing the community together. Mary Potter perhaps felt
emboldened to press the Bishop for what she considered a proper
election, one in which the sisters were allowed to choose their own
superior. Father Dougherty highlights the gravity of this action: ‘This
she knew to be an extreme measure; but it seemed the only way to
prevent the death of the Institute’ (p.116).
The election took place on 14th February 1879, and as a result of the
votes cast, Mary Potter was reinstated as Superioress.
While all these internal problems were besetting the LCM, it can’t be
denied that outwardly the work of the Congregation must have seemed a
great success. Father Dougherty writes that:
54
‘Instrumental during the first year in the conversion of at least sixty
non-Catholics, the Sisters joyfully announced, in the middle of 1880,
that there were no less than eight hundred Catholics in the Hyson Green
district’ (p.125)
Elizabeth West also writes that:
‘Statistically, the parish of Hyson Green and its surrounds had seen an
increase in the numbers attending Mass and the sacraments, children
were receiving an education, the sick were being tended, and numbers
of people converted.’ (p.105)
And Mary Potter herself recalled that:
‘the converts were so numerous and the attendance at the services so
regular and devotional that it could not be doubted that it was a place of
special benediction. No wonder - when it was the first sanctuary,
dedicated to the Maternal Heart of Mary, that Our Lord should show
how He loved us to honour the Heart of His Mother.’
However, as Father Dougherty notes: ‘As Hyson Green offered
relatively little in the way of nursing, and as the Bishop wished the
school to continue, nursing took a secondary place, and the personal
assistance of the dying was only an occasional apostolate’ (p.127)
Between 1880 and 1882 the LCM opened three more houses in the
surrounding district as branches of the Maternal Heart convent at Hyson
Green. The Convent of the Precious Blood opened in the village of
Quorndon (on the same day that the sisters professed their vows); the
Convent of the Holy Ghost in Eastwell; and the Convent of Divine
Mercy in Melton Mowbray.
Mary later wrote of the names of these four convents:
55
‘These are the four features in our Institute. The Maternity brought us
the Precious Blood and the Precious Blood brought the Holy Ghost and
Divine Mercy…this brings out [the] four features of Calvary - the
Mother's Heart, the Precious Blood, the Divine Mercy brought into the
world, the Holy Ghost, Who was poured upon the Church through the
shedding of the Precious Blood.’
The names given to the convents also recalls the way in which the plan
of the LCM had been revealed to Mary Potter by God. As she wrote in
her ‘Autobiographical’ Notes’ of her mystical experiences:
‘the various features, one by one, gradually revealed. The Maternal
Heart - "Honour the Heart of My Mother." The Precious Blood - "I have
given you my Treasure, My Life." God's mercy. The Holy Spirit - "It is
my will that you do this work."’
However, this expansion at the time it happened was a contentious issue
for Mary. As Father Dougherty points out:
‘Such rapid expansion of the Little Company was not, however, the
intention of the Foundress; she considered it premature, and dangerous
to the spirit and primary aims of the Institute.’ (p.130)
Mary was also concerned that, in establishing these branch houses,
Bishop Bagshawe was ‘sending young and inexperienced novices and
postulants alone to deserted missions’ (p.130)
It’s perhaps understandable that the continued struggle with the Bishop
led Mary more and more to think that the only real solution was to apply
for approbation before the Holy See in Rome. As Elizabeth West points
out, ‘Approbation of the Institute by Rome would remove the bishop’s
control of the Institute, as it would become an institute directly under
the authority of Rome’ (p.124).
56
In a submission to the Holy See, Mary Potter wrote:
‘We have always experienced the Bishop exceedingly kind and good,
but we feel bound and have been advised to represent to the [Sacred
Congregation of Propaganda Fide] that under such arrangement, the
order discipline and spirit of the society have suffered very much,
because the Superioress and the council having no real authority, the
Bishop can interfere with the smallest matters even of the internal life of
the Convent and nothing can be enforced without his sanction.’ (Mary
Potter to Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, no date, Tooting Bec
Archives)
Mother Cecilia likewise recalled that:
‘Mother felt it was absolutely necessary to go to Rome, not only to
obtain a Blessing and approval on her work, but in order that an end
should be put to these sad circumstances.’
Equally understandable, however, was Bishop Bagshawe’s reluctance to
accept this. In fact, he only finally gave in and allowed Mary Potter to
travel to Rome, it seems, because he considered it ‘the last wish of a
dying woman’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.133)
57
JOURNEY TO ROME –
LCM RECOGNISED
CALVARY HOSPITAL, ROME
58
Journey to Rome – LCM recognised
Mary Potter had wanted to receive the blessing and approbation of the
Holy Father for the work she was undertaking right from the very
beginning.
The letter she wrote to His Holiness Pope Pius IX in July 1876, before
she had ever set foot in Nottingham or met Bishop Bagshawe, begins:
‘It is now more than a year since I believed I was told by a direct
inspiration from God to write to you; and now that I have obtained leave
to do so, it is with great joy of heart I write.’
In the letter she describes how:
‘In certain times of communion with God He showed me His desire that
there should be a new order in the Church, the spirit and model of which
should be Calvary’
and that the members of the new order
‘would make one united body in the Heart of Our Lady…pleading…for
her children, for the Church, for its members who have greatest need,
the 80,000 who die daily’, just as the Virgin Mary ‘pleaded on Calvary’.
‘It is for this work of Mary,’ she writes,’ I beg the approbation, the
blessing of Your Holiness.’
There is no evidence in the archives of Mary ever having received a
reply to this letter (or, for that matter, of Pope Pius IX ever having seen
it), and from that time she often requested to go to Rome to make a
more direct appeal. As she writes in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘I had always intended to come to Rome before commencing, but was
not allowed and afterwards, arriving at Nottingham, I put the same idea
before the Bishop, but he said it was better to have something to show,
that they would not bless a plan, but only what was in existence.’
59
Given the opposition that some members of the Church had shown to
Mary Potter’s beliefs and ideas, she would undoubtedly have agreed
with Bishop Bagshawe’s comment:
‘Certainly if the Community be approved by the Holy See it will be
shown to have been the work of God.’
Therefore, when permission was finally granted in 1882 for Mary Potter
to go to Rome, it was the fulfilment of a long-held wish. But Mary was
also, at that time, very ill (‘The operations to remove her breasts had left
her debilitated, she was recovering from an attack of scarlet fever, and
her recovery was not hastened by the ever present reality of her
weakened heart, or the malignant tumour that had invaded her shoulder
and arm.’ (Elizabeth West, p.137)). As a precaution therefore, Dr
Bagshawe insisted that Mother Philip, the LCM’s medically trained
infirmarian, accompany Mary, as well as Mother Cecilia - ‘in case I
died on the way’ (‘Autobiographical Notes’).
Apparently none of the three had ever travelled outside England before,
and the journey stands out for how frequently it had to be broken to
allow Mary Potter to recover her strength. As Eve Healy writes, ‘Mother
Mary was very ill indeed on the boat, and the little party was forced to
spend two nights in a convent at Calais before proceeding to Paris’
(p.144). Mother Philip’s account of the subsequent journey through
France and Italy is also full of unscheduled stops due to Mary Potter’s
ill health:
‘Wed., 4th Oct., 1882. We left Paris for Turin, but Mother was so ill we
had to stop at Maçon…
‘Thursday. We left, intending to go on to Turin, but Mother was still too
ill; we stopped at Aix-les-Bains…
‘After dinner Mother sent Mother Cecilia and myself out to find a
church and make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. When we returned
we found our dear Mother very ill…
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‘Friday…Mother was getting quite unable to continue her
journey…Mother had not tasted food since early morning, and was very
weak.’ (Quoted in Eve Healy, pp.144-46)
In fact, Elizabeth West records that during the journey Mary Potter
suffered at least two ‘major heart attack[s]’ (p.138), and the following
year Mary had an even more severe one during which her companions
thought she was dying.
Mother Cecilia later recollected the moment when the three travellers
finally arrived in Rome, 10 days after leaving England:
‘I can never describe Mother’s joy, as from the train she caught a
glimpse of the Dome of St Peter’s. She immediately left her seat (we
had the carriage to ourselves) and on her knees, returned thanks and
adored Our Lord, abiding under that mighty Dome.’
The day after arriving in Rome the Sisters visited Monsignor Luigi
Macchi, Maestro di Camera to His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. Monsignor
Macchi was in charge of arranging audiences with the Holy Father, and
the Sisters had a letter of introduction to him written by Bishop
Bagshawe. Father Dougherty writes that ‘to their profound delight
[Monsignor Macchi] gave them a permit enabling them to join a group
of French pilgrims who were to be received by the Holy Father on the
following Sunday’ (p.136).
Fr Dougherty also writes that Mary Potter, while waiting for this first
audience, ‘arranged that Pope Leo might have a copy of the letter she
had written in 1876 explaining to Pope Pius IX the aims of the Institute’
(p.136).
It seems that Mary Potter didn’t speak to His Holiness on this first
occasion, but as Eve Healy writes:
‘The following Sunday another unexpected honour fell to [the Sisters’]
lot. They were admitted to the Holy Father’s Mass, received Holy
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Communion from him and were afterwards presented to the Pope by
Monsignor Macchi himself.’ (p.149)
Mary Potter now had an opportunity to talk with His Holiness and this
critical conversation is remembered by Mother Cecilia in her ‘Personal
Reminiscences’:
‘after the Mass, Monsignor Macchi presented Mother to the Holy
Father. Mother asked a blessing on our work, and said how she had
longed to see His Holiness, and with his blessing, she would be content
to return to England. Then the Holy Father said “Why return? The doors
of Rome are open to you.” From that moment Mother made up her mind
to remain in Rome.’
Exactly what Pope Leo XIII’s reply amounted to, however, is not
entirely clear. Eve Healy says that it was ‘a definite invitation’ (p.149)
to establish a foundation in Rome; Father Dougherty says that
Monsignor Macchi made clear that it was not just an invitation, but
actually ‘a request’ (p.137) to open a house there; whereas Elizabeth
West says that the Pope’s reply meant ‘the sisters were to commence
their nursing as soon as possible, with the view of opening a hospital in
Rome’ (p.139).
Whatever the true meaning of the Holy Father’s words, one of the first
things Mary Potter did after this meeting was to call on Cardinal
Simeoni, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda. This was
the body responsible for investigating whether an institution such as the
Little Company of Mary ought to receive papal approval. Mary Potter
presented Cardinal Simeoni with the LCM’s draft constitutions, but as
Eve Healy notes, ‘the Constitutions, after five years, were still in a
fragmentary state’ (p.138). Bishop Bagshawe ‘had suggested rules and
regulations to meet each occasion as it arose’ (p.138), and ‘the rules
regarding authority and those governing the training of novices left
much to be desired’ (p.138).
62
It’s clear that the LCM’s constitutions and rule were not in the form that
the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda would normally have expected,
not least because they weren’t accompanied by a translation into French
or Italian. This perhaps suggests that neither Mary Potter nor Bishop
Bagshawe had expected to have them put through the official approval
process at this time. Bishop Bagshawe did, however, arrange for them to
be translated, and shortly after they had been returned to Rome, Mary
Potter was visited by another official from the Sacred Congregation of
Propaganda, Dr Gualdi.
As she writes in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘It was on the Feast of All Souls that we first met Dr. Gualdi…he said
he had come on the part of Propaganda to tell us it would be no use our
waiting in Rome. They had far too much important business to attend to
any rules of a new Foundation…However I did not feel I could return
without some more definite approval, so I quietly answered this strange
priest, that I had got off a bed of sickness to come to Rome for the
approval of the Church and the arrangement of the Rules of the Little
Company and I should not return until this was done. He looked up and
so did I … he very kindly answered, "That makes a difference, and
under the circumstances we will see what can be done." …We were
friends from that moment.’
This suggests that while Mary Potter had not arrived in Rome properly
prepared for the LCM’s Rule and Constitution to be officially examined,
she had decided, now that the possibility had presented itself, that it was
critical that this was done.
As a result, Father Cardella was nominated as the Official Examiner of
the Rule of the Little Company of Mary. Mary Potter expresses even
more gratitude towards him in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘Here indeed was a still greater friend, one certainly sent by God. He
recognised the work immediately, thought it better that we should stay
and have a house in Rome and was most kind and encouraging in every
way…
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‘Father Cardella was then all in all to us. I gave him what I had
regarding the work, and he devoted himself to it, heart and soul, and
used to be quite disappointed that he could not press the matter quicker
than he did.’
Once again, Mary Potter makes the point that it was only if the LCM
was a work of God, rather than her own will, was she interested in
seeing it succeed:
‘In giving my confidence to Father Cardella I told him, "This work is
nothing to do with me and if it is not inspired by God I do not wish to
continue it, but will return to my mother. If you do not find in the
writings the mark of God's Spirit I should like to know."’
One aspect which the examination of the LCM’s Rule and Constitution
would have highlighted was the continuing differences between Mary
Potter and Bishop Bagshawe over the LCM’s purpose and how it should
be governed. As Eve Healy points out: ‘Matters of importance about
which these two holy people differed had not been settled before Mother
Mary came to Rome.’ (p.157) In particular, Father Dougherty notes that
Mary Potter’s ‘ideas on the spirit and work of the Little Company of
Mary differed…greatly, even in essential matters, from those proposed
in the Bishop’s draft’ (p.139).
It seems that the officials of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, in
their discussions with Mary Potter, soon realized that they should be
looking at more than the Bishop’s draft in considering the LCM’s Rule
and Constitution. As Father Dougherty writes, when it became apparent
that ‘a written summary of Mother Potter’s own suggestions and her
frank judgment on the Bishop’s ideas were needed’ (p.140), Dr Gualdi
prepared an outline of the document that Cardinal Simeoni wanted
joined to the Rule.
This resulted in Mary Potter’s compiling a very thorough account of
what she considered to be the deficiencies in how the LCM was
currently constituted and run. It is a very illuminating insight into the
64
problems which had arisen during the first few years of the LCM’s
existence.
The document (which incorporates many of Dr Gualdi’s suggested
phrasings) begins by pointing out that:
‘the present rules are a compound of the rules primarily formed and
presented to the Bishop and certain rules added thereto by himself. The
rules in their present from are written by the Bishop. There are many
omissions from and likewise many additions to the original rule.’
In other words, Mary Potter makes clear that she already had a notion of
how the LCM was to be constituted and run before she met Bishop
Bagshawe, and believes that his rules – the ones she has brought to
Rome – do not properly capture that initial vision.
The reason for the discrepancy Mary puts down to the fact that the
Bishop has assumed too much authority over the LCM, and this has had
a detrimental impact on the Congregation’s development. The Bishop
‘has reserved to himself the right of Superior General of the Society and
governs the society; all other Superiors and Council being only his
representatives and advisers’. Therefore ‘the Superioress and Council
[have] no real authority’. This, the document points out, has meant that
‘Postulants have been admitted and Novices retained to whom the
Superioress and council objected’; in particular, those ‘not having a true
religious spirit’. It has also led to sisters having ‘to work in parishes
with bad priests’, and ‘new foundations [being] opened, whether the
Sisters think the said foundations can be prudently entered upon or not’.
These problems can’t be remedied as the rules stand because ‘The
Council, by the present rule, may not discuss matters already decided by
the Bishop. The duty of the Superioress, by the present rule, is to
enforce the Bishop’s wishes and directions’. Therefore, the document
argues, it would help to have the rules changed so that they are as
‘found in all other Congregations and Societies, giving to the Mother
Superioress and their Council their proper authority and restraining the
Bishop to his own right of ordinary of the place.’
65
This is a very emphatic repudiation of the way that Bishop Bagshawe
had taken for himself ‘sole control of the Little Company of Mary.’ It is
also extremely telling that the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda did
not even wait for the draft of a new set of rules to be drawn up before
acting on what it clearly felt was a serious mistake by the Bishop. As
Bishop Bagshawe wrote to Mary Potter in a letter dated 27th February
1883:
‘The Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda has written to me that it is not in
accordance with Canonical usage for a Bishop to be immediate Superior
of a Religious Congregation, which may spread into other Dioceses. He
wishes that the Little Company of Mary should now be allowed to
govern itself. You are therefore now released from the obedience
prescribed in the Rule as hitherto observed. You and your Council will
henceforward decide for yourselves upon your future movements and
those of the Sisters.’
This, in one sense, provided a very swift resolution to the lengthy
struggle between the Bishop and Mary Potter over who ought to decide
how the LCM develops. The fact that it didn’t require waiting for a new
Rule to be drawn up surely indicates how seriously the Sacred
Congregation of Propaganda took the issue.
But Mary Potter’s document dealt with other pressing concerns, the
most important of which was the Novitiate. As the document points out,
the rules on the Novitiate as they stand did ‘not [coincide] with the
original plan laid before the Bishop’. What Mary Potter goes on to write
concerning this is very illuminating for what it reveals about her
conception of how an LCM Novice should be formed:
‘Our idea has always been that the Novitiate should be a most strict and
prolonged one, that the Novice should spend a great part of her
Novitiate in strict seclusion from the world and in that seclusion learn to
commune with God, acquire all useful knowledge and thus fit herself to
hereafter mix with the world, as most of the Little Company of Mary
will have to – “to be in the world but not of it”. The gradual steps of the
Novitiate are to be in union with the life of Our Lord. The first act of the
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Novice when, after some months preparation, she receives the habit is to
consecrate herself entirely to Mary, in union with Jesus at the moment
of the Annunciation. She will imitate Him in His childhood, youth and
then spend the last part of her Novitiate in union with Jesus, “going
about everywhere doing good”, and thus preparing to follow her Lord to
Calvary, where she will be bound to Him, where she will become His
spouse’.
Equally telling for what it says about Mary Potter’s idea of the dual
nature of the LCM is the following paragraph:
‘There is an omission in the present rule of an important part of the
original idea, to which the Bishop agreed at the commencement, viz. –
that part of the sisters should be contemplative, that is to say, they
should not be required to leave the convent for active works. They
would have the same spirit – Our Lady on Calvary – and would watch
in choir praying for the dying whilst other sisters are engaged personally
assisting them. They would also be employed in all the rough work of
the convent, thus saving the time of the Sisters engaged in nursing or
mission work. The contemplatives would be chosen when found more
fitted, either from spiritual reasons, or bodily.’
When Bishop Bagshawe learnt about these developments in Rome he
was understandably quite put out. In his letters to Mary Potter and
Mother Philip at this time you can see him struggling to come to terms
with his loss of authority, as well as with the introduction of proposed
rules that he – sometimes quite emphatically - disagreed with.
At first he can only manage reluctant praise for what Mary Potter has
accomplished:
‘I suppose I must congratulate you upon the independence thus
achieved.’
67
The outcome, however, is not very welcome to him:
‘I cannot deny that the decision of the Sacred Congregation gave me
pain inasmuch as it took completely out of my hands a work in which I
was so much interested. No doubt on both sides we shall do our best to
continue good friends, but your removal from my direction both as a
Community and as individuals must of necessity result in a great
alteration of the intimate relations and frequent communication hitherto
maintained.’
However, a fortnight later, he is feeling happier with the situation:
‘I conclude that the evils I feared are not so much to be feared as I
supposed. I am therefore now very glad of the decision in every way. It
has relieved me of a very heavy and increasing weight of responsibility
and will give me much more leisure to attend to my proper duties. I am
now bound to suppose it will be also for the good of the Community.’
But at the same time he is beginning to realise the full ramifications of
what has happened:
‘I shall continue to do all I can to promote [the LCM’s] interests and to
be kind to its members. It is however evident, that as its guide and
Director, and in any special sense its Father, “my occupation is gone”
and the fact, of course, cannot help being realised both by the Sisters
and by myself.’
A month later still, he acknowledges that elements of his vision of the
LCM will now be dismantled:
‘Some of the foundations in Nottingham were for the service of the
Diocese, rather than for the extension of the Order. I have thought it
scarcely fair, but now that the Holy See has practically decided that the
Order is not to be subservient to the interests of the Diocese, but to look
out for itself, it will be quite right and reasonable that you should
withdraw the Sisters from some of the houses, if you need them more
elsewhere. Do as you think best.’
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In subsequent letters he then starts to express quite strong opposition to
the proposed rule changes:
‘I was grieved to hear of the Novitiate arrangement, and cannot help
thinking it a great stretch of authority on the part of the Council, or
rather the four members of it at Rome, to make on their own account a
new Rule of such grave importance. It seems to me quite contrary to the
Spirit and intention of the present Rule, and will never have my
sympathy or approval… To me the idea of some sisters being shut off
from others and forbidden ever to speak to them, as though they were
contagious or excommunicated, is in the highest degree repulsive.’
Then a month after this, it could be said that the penny finally drops,
and Bishop Bagshawe realises the full implications of what is happening
in Rome:
‘I cannot say that I am altogether pleased at the prospect of having a
Rule imposed on [the LCM] which I have never seen, and possibly may
very much dislike. The essential basis and principal characteristics of
the Institute I began, have been swept away, and very properly, if they
were uncanonical. But it leaves the Institute now coming into being, a
new one, and one of which I have had no opportunity of judging
whether I like it, such as I should have had, had I been asked to admit an
Institute already founded…
‘I have but little hope of the Institute coming back as it went, with its
spirit, (as I understand it) unchanged, and but little hope therefore of
being able to feel any particular interest in it.
‘I have let myself in for it, and can only hope that the consequences may
be as little objectionable as possible.’
Even a year later, Bishop Bagshawe was still smarting from what had
happened:
‘My Rule is squashed and nothing in the place of it’
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But it would be wrong to think that Mary Potter had not kept the Bishop
informed of what was happening, or that she was not being very
carefully guided in what she wrote, both for the Rome authorities and to
the Bishop, by the officials in the Scared Congregation of Propaganda.
And as often happens, when Mary Potter became very ill at the end of
1884, and her life was once again threatened, it made the Bishop
appreciate just how much he valued her:
‘My dearest Child in Our Lady,
I hope this may find you better and in much less pain. It is dreadful to
read the account of what you have been suffering…I hardly realised
how much we should all miss you, till God seemed to be on the point of
taking you. I hope He will still spare you to us all.’
Two of the most important practical matters that the sisters faced in
Rome were the problems of accommodation and finances. On their
journey to Rome they had relied on hospitality from, among others,
Sisters of Le Sainte Union, Sisters of Marie Auxiliatrice, Sisters of La
Rétriate, and Sisters of the Good Shepherd, and the latter two had also
provided them with help in their early days in Rome. But, as Eve Healy
points out, ‘They lived more or less from day to day’ (p.151).
However, one very promising source of income was from nursing
amongst the English residents and visitors in Rome. As Father
Dougherty points out, ‘Since hospital conditions and the quality of
nursing in Italy left much to be desired, one can understand why the
English-speaking residents, when ill, preferred to be treated at home
and, if possible, by a sister of the Little Company of Mary.’ (p.169)
‘The Roman authorities were only too anxious to encourage such a
work,’ says Eve Healy (p.151). As a result, in January 1883, Mary
Potter applied to the Cardinal Vicar of Rome for permission to nurse in
the City. She also sent to Hyson Green for three more sisters to come to
Rome.
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At this time, Sisters Mary, Philip and Cecilia were living in rooms
provided rent-free by a convent of Franciscan Sisters. This had been
arranged by one of the English residents in Rome, the Honourable Mrs
Montgomery. The Franciscan convent was large, with many spare
rooms, and would easily have accommodated the three extra LCM
sisters who were coming from England. But before they arrived, as
Father Dougherty writes, the Franciscan Superioress ‘suggested that the
Little Company amalgamate with her own Institute, take its habit, and
become the nursing section of a community which up to that time had
been composed solely of teaching sisters.’ (p.153)
It seems that quite a lot of pressure was put on Mary Potter, by various
people, to accept this suggestion. It would help the LCM with its
accommodation and financial problems, and would also, it seems, help
this particular Franciscan institute in its own efforts to obtain papal
approbation.
But as Father Dougherty succinctly points out, ‘Were Mother Potter to
accept this proposal the Little company of Mary would give up its
particular spirit, and retain only what was secondary, the exterior work
of nursing.’ (p.153)
Mary Potter herself, looking back on this period in her
‘Autobiographical Notes’, even seems to suggest that amalgamation was
perhaps the aim of the offer of rent-free rooms all along:
‘But I do not think that I am judging that it was a little plot that we
might join the Franciscans. She, Mrs. Montgomery, did not herself
openly propose it to us, but it was connived at by others.’
In fact, she notes that she had already had to sidestep a similar trap once
before:
‘It is remarkable the baits laid out for us, enticing us to become
Franciscans. When I first went to Nottingham the Bishop proposed that,
saying it would remove so many difficulties and that there were twenty
ready to join me.’
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The upshot of Mary Potter’s declining the amalgamation offer,
especially with Sisters Catherine, Michael and Rose arriving from
England, was the urgent need to find alternative accommodation for the
six of them. Luckily, a Franciscan friar called Father Luke Carey was
able to secure them a small apartment in Via Purificazione, close to his
church.
The Sisters’ nursing skills were much appreciated. As Father Dougherty
writes:
‘[The sisters’ nursing] work was praised by the Cardinal Vicar and
appreciated by their patients; by April they were so well known and
popular that some of them had been called to cases in Florence and
Milan.’ (p.154)
Around this time, however, Mary Potter heard some surprising news
which might have troubled her: Monsignor Virtue – now Bishop Virtue
– had arrived in Rome. Before setting off for Rome Mary had tried once
again to retrieve the important letters she had written to Monsignor
Virtue at the time of her earlier mystical experiences, and once again he
had declined to give them back. If he still felt the same way about them,
his views could potentially cause problems for the approbation process.
However, as Father Dougherty writes:
‘Quite by coincidence, as [Mary Potter] entered an apartment in the
Vatican Palace to await an audience with the Holy Father, she found
that Bishop Virtue was also there for the same purpose; crossing the
room “most joyfully,” he greeted her with exceptional kindness. So,
after seven years of separation, Dr. Virtue and Mary Potter cordially
greeted each other “at the feet of the Holy Father”. In the course of a
brief conversation, His Lordship promised to send her letters to the
Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda – an undertaking he faithfully fulfilled
on his return to England.’ (p.159)
Unfortunately, despite the joy of this reconciliation, Mary Potter not
long afterwards suffered one of her most serious bouts of illness. One
night in June 1883 she had a particularly severe heart attack. Mother
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Cecilia vividly describes how Mary Potter ‘became deadly white’, and
‘her body seemed stretched as if on a rack, and a sound as if her bones
were dislocated, a cracking sound.’ Mary Potter herself also later wrote
an account of this experience, which she believed revealed to her the
‘agonies’ of death:
‘Those around thought me dying; they knew not what I was going
through. How describe? Suppose one member of the body only out of
place, this is agony until replaced. Now if this can be imagined all over
the body. A powerful strong wave, sweeping over the shrinking body
and withdrawing the life partly. There is a vacuum; the sufferer is
breathless and gasps, the feeble life seeks to return, but another
powerful wave sweeps again with resistless force, withdrawing still
more of that life. Again and again comes this mighty wave. Ah, pray!
for the sufferer may be silent, and show nothing, too weak to give any
sign of what is going on.’ (Quoted in Mother Cecilia’s ‘Personal
Reminiscences’)
For Mary Potter, this experience once again led her to consider the
plight of dying sinners: ‘but imagine a soul without faith, feeling
this…what might happen? May God avert it! May God strengthen the
prayer that emanates from Mary’s Heart’ (Quoted in Mother Cecilia’s
‘Personal Reminiscences’)
Later that year the Sisters moved house yet again. This time the property
on Via Sforza ai Monti was, as Father Dougherty writes, ‘spacious,
clean and newly renovated, with excellent rooms for sacristy and
Chapel, and a small garden’ (p.156). The Sisters remained there for the
next ten years. The house had been found for them by Count Plunkett,
whose ill wife the Sisters had nursed ‘through a long and serious illness’
(Eve Healy, p.155). The Count also guaranteed the rent until the sisters
could provide for themselves (despite their income from nursing, ‘two
Sisters went out begging daily’ (Eve Healy, p.155))
On 20th May the following year, ‘the Cardinal Vicar decreed the formal
establishment of the Little Company in Rome[,] granted permission for
daily Mass and reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and appointed Dr.
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Gualdi as the Community’s first official Chaplain and Father Cardella,
S.J. [as] one of the confessors.’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.157)
As Father Dougherty also points out, ‘The abiding presence of their
Sacramental Lord [was] a privilege they had lacked since their coming
to Rome’ (p.157).
Eve Healy also notes that ‘There was accommodation here for three or
four patients, as well as for a small novitiate. Thus Mother Mary was
able to accept postulants for the first time since leaving England.’
(p.155)
In the same month. Mary Potter was also able to write to Bishop
Bagshawe ‘that work on the Rule had at last been completed and official
sanction had been requested’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.151). However, it
would be another two whole years before the Rule received approbation.
Unfortunately, by mid-November 1884, Mary Potter was again ‘gravely
ill’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.163), and in midsummer the following year,
was ‘informed by the doctor that “without a miracle” she could not live
for more than “three months”’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.165).
But the following February Father Cardella informed Mary Potter that
the Rule had received the approval of the officials of Propaganda. There
was only the vote of the Cardinals remaining. As Father Dougherty
writes:
‘Towards the end of May [1886], Pope Leo XIII, in an audience with
Monsignor Jacobini, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of
Propaganda, authorized the approbation of the Little Company of Mary
for five years. The Decree of Approval was issued on 31st May.’ (p.151)
The joyful and grateful reaction of Mary Potter to the news that the
LCM was now an institute of pontifical right is illustrated by the letter
she sent to the sisters in England:
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‘Magnificat! one long thanksgiving now, dear children, all. The Holy
Father has signed the Decree of Approbation.’ (Quoted in Patrick
Dougherty, p.151)
However, as Elizabeth West points out, the way in which the LCM was
described in the official documents for approbation was not entirely in
line with Mary Potter’s vision:
‘What [was missing] was the definition of the institute as a religious
order, express mention of the particular De Montfortian spirituality so
central to the institute, and all scriptural references.’ (p.152)
Mary Potter was now the Superior General of ‘The Institute of Nursing
Sisters, called the Little Company of Mary’. This particular formulation,
the result of canonical requirements at the time, undoubtedly puts the
emphasis in a different place than it had in Mary Potter’s founding
vision. But as Elizabeth West notes, ‘What had been omitted by the
formalised constitutions, Potter would seek to consolidate through her
own conferences and instructions upon the meaning and intent of the
rule.’ (p.152). Thus, Mary Potter would often try to remind the LCM
sisters where the true emphasis of their work should lie:
‘You know, dear Children … the first object of our foundation is not to
nurse, as so many suppose … Our first object if to model Calvary.’
‘We were not founded in God’s Kingdom simply to nurse, we were
founded to extend the kingdom of God by making Mary reign in the
hearts of men.’ (Quoted in Elizabeth West, p148)
But at the moment of approbation, there was much to look forward to.
As Father Dougherty writes:
‘No sooner had Dr Gualdi, on 16th August, informed her that she might
safely proceed to the first Ceremony of Final Profession, than Mother
Potter, together with Mothers Philip and Cecilia, returned to England
and was joyfully welcomed by the sisters, many of whom she had never
met.’ (p.174)
75
The time Mary Potter had spent at the Sisters of Mercy in Brighton was
considered a satisfactory novitiate, but the other sisters were granted a
‘sanatio’ by the Holy Father to enable them to proceed to their Final
Vows.
As an entry in 'The Journal of Hyson Green Convent' records, on the
Feast of Our lady of Dolours, 15th September 1886, in the Chapel at
Hyson Green, the first Ceremony of Final Profession took place:
‘His Lordship the Bishop came, said Mass, and received the “Final
Vows” of The Revd Mother General Foundress of the “Little Company
of Mary” and of Mothers M Philip M Magdalen M Agnes and M Cecilia
four of the first Mothers of the said Little Company…Received also on
same day from Rome through Fr Cardella – The Holy Father’s Blessing
for all especially who made Final Vows – Also received letters of
congratulations from our dear Sisters in Rome and Florence.’
The Little Company of Mary was now ready to grow into a fully global
Congregation.
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Calvary Hospital, Rome
Mary Potter’s struggle to build Calvary Hospital, with its innovative
heart-shaped chapel at the centre – even though most architects thought
the design impracticable - and on a site which to many appeared wholly
unsuitable - but which Mary said was ‘God’s Will’ (‘Autobiographical
Notes’), even though she ‘personally prefer[red]’ (‘Autobiographical
Notes’) another – was one of the most difficult periods in her life.
As Father Dougherty writes, ‘With the exception of the early days at
Hyson Green these seemed to [have] been the most critical moments in
the history of the Little Company of Mary’ (p.216, n.3).
‘The Foundress was accused of “rashness and imprudence,” of “ruining
the prospects of the community,” of sending the Little Company “out
into the outskirts of Rome to a deserted place where no one would ever
come to them,” and of attempting what was financially far beyond the
Institute’s available and foreseeable means’ (p.216)
Elizabeth West considers the ‘turmoil and dissension’ (p.175) that Mary
Potter’s plan created was even more critical: ‘the discord was perhaps
even greater than that which had nearly destroyed the small community
at Hyson Green’ (p.175)
However, ‘Potter, though barely able to walk and suffering from a
painful malignant tumour of the shoulder, held out against pressures
applied from both the Vatican and her community’ (p.175).
The creation of Calvary Hospital had been a long-held dream for Mary
Potter. As Eve Healy writes, ‘Many years previously Mother Mary had
drawn up, and carried about with her, a roughly sketched plan of her
ideal mother house and hospital.’ (p232 – the sketch is in the archives)
And as Father Dougherty points out, the building’s importance is that it
is ‘an architectural interpretation of the spirit of the Little Company of
Mary’ (p.219), or in another of his wonderful phrases, ‘her sermon in
stone’ (pp.226-7), ‘a perpetual symbol of her spiritual life’ (p.227).
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‘The building, in the shape of a Latin Cross, would be a continual
reminder of Calvary and of man’s duty to “take up his cross daily.” In
the centre would be the chapel, where He, without Whom the cross has
no meaning, would be sacramentally present. Mother hoped that the
chapel, so placed, would encourage the sisters and their patients to make
Christ the centre of their lives. To facilitate their visiting the Blessed
Sacrament, not only was there to be access from all main corridors, but
tribunes would be placed on each floor to enable patients to be taken, in
their beds, to Mass and Benediction. In stipulating that the chapel be
heart-shaped, the Foundress had in mind that the Christian, standing as
did Our Lady “at the foot of the Cross,” should share in her Maternal
Heart’s love for Christ and zeal for the salvation of mankind.’ (p.219)
Mary Potter’s desire to build Calvary Hospital stretched back at least as
far as the late 1880s. Over the years various possibilities for a site and
the necessary financial support had arisen and then proved unworkable.
Both the Cardinal Vicar, and later Count Arthur Moore, had
enthusiastically championed Mary Potter’s cause and tried to find a way
to bring it to fruition, but it was only in 1902 when Father Chandlery –
the Jesuit confessor to the LCM who had also suggested the building for
the Fiesole foundation - suggested the purchase of an abandoned
vineyard at the rear of the old Church of Santo Stefano Rotondo on the
Coelian Hill as a possible site, that a decisive advance was made.
However, as Father Dougherty writes, ‘At once a great storm of
opposition broke.’ (p.216) This ‘piece of waste ground’ (Eve Healy,
p.235), at that time ‘right out in the country’, with no decent transport
connections to the city, was not at all the sort of site with a large garden
and easily adaptable house that some of the Sisters had envisaged. In
particular, Cardinal Merry del Val (who, according to Elizabeth West,
was ‘probably the most conspicuous ecclesial figure in Rome…[and]
held much influence among the English and European aristocrats of
Rome’, p.237, n.259) was very much in favour of an alternative site – a
house and piece of ground just behind St Peter’s Basilica – and there
were Sisters who supported him.
78
It is fascinating to notice how similar Mary Potter’s chosen location for
Calvary Hospital was in many respects to the position of the first
convent at Hyson Green. That was also outside the main city, in an area
that, like this proposed location, could be called ‘poor and squalid’ (Eve
Healy, p.235). Mary Potter even makes the comparison herself in her
‘Autobiographical Notes’ when she considers ‘The objection…that it is
too far out’: ‘When we first went to Hyson Green there was not even a
tram or bus to Nottingham’. That Mary Potter felt this site was ‘God’s
Will’ in preference to an attractive site right next to the Vatican
indicates just how strongly it must have impressed her as the right
choice.
The fact that the Coelian Hill site offered plenty of space in which to
expand was certainly a key factor. As Eve Healy writes, ‘[Mary Potter]
was not going to build for that decade, or even for that century; she was
building for a great future.’ (pp.234-5)
Another important factor in the importance of choosing the right site
was that when the LCM Rule and Constitution received Final
Approbation in 1893, the Mother House was from that time on to be
based in Rome rather than Hyson Green. This was a great relief to Mary
Potter since there had been a longstanding battle between her and
Bishop Bagshawe over where she should reside: until the Final
Approbation the Mother House was still officially at Hyson Green, and
according to the constitution that was where the LCM’s Superior and
council should be based. This meant Bishop Bagshawe’s letters often
requested Mary Potter’s return from Rome, and it was frequently only
for health reasons that she was allowed to spend time in Rome. But
since 1893, Rome had been the official location of the Mother House,
although the LCM was still very much making do with whatever
property became available, whereas the Coelian Hill site offered a
chance to create a convent, chapel, hospital, novitiate and Mother House
from scratch, as close to Mary Potter’s ideal as possible.
According to Father Dougherty, ‘The purchase money [for the site] was
paid by the Little Company in Mother Potter’s room at Via
Castelfidardo on July 8th, 1903’ (p.218). By that time, Cardinal
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Respighi, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, had given his ‘whole-hearted
approval’ (p.217), and Pope Leo had also ‘sent his personal blessing and
encouragement’ (p.217). But there were still many problems to
overcome. One was the selection of an architect. Mother Potter wanted
Aristide Leonori, who seems to have been the only architect who had
‘enthusiastically supported and praised her ideas’ (Eve Healy, pp.2334), as well as declaring her design ‘absolutely sound’ (p.234). However,
Cardinal Merry del Val preferred Augusto Carletti, and since Mary
Potter had not gone along with the Cardinal’s choice of site it seems she
decided to give way to him on the choice of architect, although insisting
that Aristide Leonori be retained as a consultant. Father Dougherty
writes ‘It is interesting to note that most of the difficulties which arose
during the erection of Calvary Hospital – and there were many – were
successfully solved by the intervention of Aristide Leonori’ (p.219, n.5)
In fact, at the time Father Dougherty was writing, the Cause for
Leonori’s Beatification was being investigated.
On 24th May, 1904, ‘the building project was officially committed to
Our Lady’s Maternal care’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.220) and on 15th
December, ‘an extra-liturgical feast of the Maternal Heart of Mary’
(p.221), the official foundation-stone was laid by Cardinal Respighi.
According to Father Dougherty, Pope Leo XIII, two months before his
death, had ‘placed both hands on the marble foundation-stone of
Calvary Hospital and said: “May God bless and prosper it.”’ (p.220).
For the ceremony on 15th December, a ‘parchment containing [an]
inscription in Latin’ (p.222) was put into the stone, which referred to it
as ‘the first stone of the Church of the Maternal Heart of Mary and the
Hospital of Calvary to be erected by the sisters of the Little Company of
Mary, with donations from benefactors of various nationalities.’ (p.222)
There appears to have been quite a large turnout for this ceremony,
with, among others, ‘Archbishop Stoner…Archbishop Redwood, S.M.,
of Wellington, Archbishop Ilsley of Birmingham, the Abbot Primate of
the Benedictines, the Rectors and students of various Colleges, the
Dominicans from San Clemente, the Passionists from Santi Giovanni e
Paolo, and a large gathering of other ecclesiastical and lay friends’
(pp.221-2). The parlour of the nearby Carmelite Sisters was used for
80
refreshments; Father Bernard Vaughan, S.J. (the ‘fiery preacher’
connected to the LCM’s East End convent) delivered a sermon; and
Archbishop Stoner gave Solemn Benediction.
Unfortunately, the one key person not able to be there was Mary Potter
herself. She was once again too ill to travel.
The completion of the building progressed in stages, with the convent
wing the first to be built. When Mary Potter visited the site in October
1905, she was taken to the crypt, between the right and left wing of the
building’s cross, and according to Father Dougherty, she ‘paused and
said to the architect…”You must leave a place for me here; some day I
shall come back” – words which were to be recalled twelve years later,
when her body was transferred thither from Rome’s Cemetery.’ (p.223).
The convent wing was ready in 1906 and on 2nd July Mary Potter moved
in (arriving, as usual, in the carriage of Mrs Kinloch Grant, who
‘invariably lent her carriage and horses whenever Mother needed them’
(p.223)). Because the central heart-shaped chapel was still not complete,
there was a temporary chapel on the ground floor of the convent, and
amazingly ‘an opening was cut into the ceiling of the chapel’ (p.223) to
enable Mary Potter ‘to look down onto the tabernacle and to assist at
Mass and Benediction from her study’(p.223).
As Father Dougherty points out, ‘now [Mary Potter] had a true home,
wherein she would spend every moment of the six remaining years of
her life’ (p.224). But as with the first convent in Hyson Green, Mary
Potter had moved into a building that was only partly habitable, and
there was little warmth to counteract the first ‘severe winter’ (p.224)
spent there.
The hospital wing was the next portion of the building to be ready, in
1907, and according to Eve Healy the first patient was ‘a non-Catholic
American lady’, who was ‘brought in and operated upon successfully’
(p.242) Mother Catherine was chosen as the first Directress of the
hospital.
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But the part of the building which gave Mary Potter the most joy, was
the completion of the heart-shaped central chapel. It is worth studying
the description of the chapel’s interior given by Father Dougherty, as it
indicates the elements that Mary Potter considered best represented the
spirit and purpose of the Little Company of Mary:
‘Behind the beautiful high altar of white marble, the gift of Mr. and
Mrs. Pate, Mother Potter caused to be inscribed in Latin the Blessed
Virgin’s last recorded statement: “Whatsoever He shall say to you, do
ye” (St. John II, 5); and above that, a large representation of the Calvary
scene, carved in wood by the sculptor Stufflesser. Around the walls
were inscribed, in clear large letters, the Seven Words spoken by Our
Lord from the Cross ["Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do." (Luke 23:34); "Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with
me in paradise." (Luke 23:43); "Woman, behold thy son...Behold thy
mother." (John 19:26-27); "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" (Matt. 27:46); "I thirst." (John 19:28); "It is consummated." (John
19:30); "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23:46)];
high above the sanctuary a painting of a Chalice and Host, encircled by
the words of Exodus: “I shall see the blood and shall pass over you. And
the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you (Ex. XII, 13); in the
centre of the dome, a painting of a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit;
on either side of the high altar, shrines of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
of the Maternal Heart of Mary; at the back of the chapel the Pietà, given
by Mrs. MacDonald; and, to the side, a painting of the death of Saint
Joseph.’ (pp.225-6)
The blessing and opening took place on 11th October, 1908, Feast of the
Maternity of the Blessed Virgin. However, even after all this time, Mary
Potter still had to contend with an objection from Monsignor Carlo
Respighi (not to be confused with Cardinal Respighi), Papal Master of
Ceremonies, to dedicating the chapel’s altar to the ‘Maternal Heart of
Mary’. He said that it was not a term in liturgical use, and suggested
instead ‘Most Pure Heart of Mary’. Once again, Mary Potter had to fight
to have this title properly recognised, and it was only after consulting
the Cardinal Vicar, who then consulted Pope Pius X, that the go-ahead
was given. This time, Mary Potter was able to be present at the
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ceremony, ‘from a tribune on the first floor, just outside her room’
(Patrick Dougherty, p.226)
As Father Dougherty notes, ‘The completion and blessing of the chapel
was one of the greatest joys in Mary Potter’s life’ (p.227)
However, there was still another element that Mary Potter wished to
include on this site: a nursing school. Nursing schools had already been
set up by the LCM in both Australia and Ireland, but there was yet again
a ‘storm of opposition’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.235) to this idea in Rome.
Many people thought it wouldn’t work there, since ‘order and discipline
were foreign to Italian nurses’ (p.235), and ‘few, if any, decent and
intelligent Italian girls would contemplate entering the nursing
“profession”’. Mother Cecilia’s own account of this period illustrates
how many in the LCM felt:
‘I often think of Our dear Mother’s words of the first ungovernable girls
who presented themselves to train in our Nursing School of St Gregory,
and I may add here that very few of us wanted this School, but Mother
with her prophetic mind, saw far into the future, and said “How much
good would be done by it, and how many souls as well as bodies saved
by a good band of religiously trained nurses”…[but] the first
probationers were very undisciplined and difficult to manage; they gave
any amount of trouble at the commencement and tried our patience to
the utmost. We would tell Mother that she must send those girls away,
we could not put up with them any longer.’
It appears that Mary Potter took a great deal of trouble to personally
help these trainee nurses understand what was required of them (there
are many letters to them in the archives; she would also talk to them
individually ‘of God and Our Lady, and even ask them to sing for her’,
and Mother Cecilia admits that ‘The present success of Saint Gregory’s
Training School is due to [Mary Potter’s] patience in those first days.’
As Father Dougherty writes, ‘San Gegorio’ was the second nursing
school to be founded in Rome, but the first in Italy to be directed by
Religious (p.233). It was another pioneering achievement of Mary
Potter’s, whose LCM had been ‘the first Catholic Religious
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congregation founded in England since the Reformation for the purpose
of nursing the sick’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.232). Maternity nursing, too,
was an area which Mary Potter fought to have Religious allowed to
contribute to.
This provision of a hospital service, available to all - not only the sick,
but also the dying – with technically trained nurses at a time when ‘the
status of the nurse [had sunk] to an almost indescribable level of
degradation’ (History of Nursing, quoted in Eve Healy, p.177), is
something that it is easy to underestimate from the perspective of the
present. As Eve Healy pointed out:
‘At the time of the Reformation the general attitude towards the sick
poor changed. Nearly all hospitals founded since then have stipulated in
their statutes that they were to be used only for the curable sick. Their
doors were to remain closed to the dying.’ (pp.176-7)
But LCM hospitals specifically provided for the dying. This is because
their purpose was not primarily a physical cure, but spiritual assistance.
With the financial help of a wealthy convert, Miss Hilda Hanbury (later
Lady Currie), not only was the Training School built, but ‘Early in
1909, additional wards, a Nurses’ Home, a lecture hall and an outpatients’ department for the poor’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.235).
Perhaps the most authoritative seal of approval for this whole venture
was given when the first group of nursing probationers were ‘received
by Pope Pius X in Special Audience’:
‘His Holiness, remarking on their beautiful white uniforms and blue
mantles, spoke to them of their important duty to become skilled nurses,
and advised them to have an intense zeal for the sick and dying, so that
by their care of the body they might contribute to the healing of the
soul.’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.235)
84
LCM IN THE WORLD – EXPANSION
85
Even before the Little Company of Mary had received official (though
still only provisional) papal approval in May 1886, several requests had
already been put to Mary Potter for her to establish foundations in other
parts of the world.
What is most telling about Mary Potter’s response to these requests is
that she was very hesitant about accepting them, and was certainly not
looking to solicit them. Perhaps this caution was partly a result of the
problems she’d experienced when Bishop Bagshawe had insisted on
setting up more branches around Nottingham in a way that she thought
was premature. But it also indicates the fact that Mary Potter was never
interested in expanding the LCM simply for expansion’s sake.
Mary Potter’s writings and actions make clear that she was only willing
to respond to the many requests she received to set up new foundations
if the religious spirit and purpose of the LCM could be ensured in the
new locations. She was very aware that to simply judge the success of
her Congregation by the number and size of the hospitals it created, or
how many patients it was able to nurse, was a misunderstanding of its
purpose.
As she wrote in a letter to those at Hyson Green on the 21st anniversary
of the first LCM Sisters receiving the Religious habit:
‘No, we shall not glory at the hour of death in Convents built, in
Hospitals, but [shall say] with the Apostle: ‘God forbid that I should
glory save in the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.’’ (Letter dated 2 nd July,
1898, to Mother M. Magdalen, Mother Agnes, and Mother Cecilia,
quoted in Patrick Dougherty, p.205)
Similarly, in a letter to Mother Catherine Crocker saying how Mother
Catherine should respond to the pressure being put on the foundation at
Limerick in Ireland by Bishop O’Dwyer:
‘show him that it is no import to us to have a large Hospital or building,
but we want to be where we can do good and carry out most perfectly
our Rules. That we have not ambition in our works.’
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And to Mother Raphael in Australia she wrote:
‘for God will not ask you about hospitals and night refuges…but he will
ask you if, in thought word and deed you strove to live your rule.’
It is clear that Mary Potter felt that the success of the external work of
the Institute was in danger of obscuring its fundamental religious
purpose, and that Sisters might get so caught up in their nursing and its
very visible success or failure, that they may neglect the spiritual raison
d’être of their life as religious sisters.
This reticence about ‘blowing your own trumpet’, especially when it
came to outward success rather than inner spiritual achievement, seems
to have been a key difference between the LCM and some other
institutes at the time. As Mary Potter writes in her ‘Autobiographical
Notes’:
‘I find other orders summing up all they do in a most methodical
manner, photographs of their houses and even how much they are
worth. These things had never entered our minds’
In particular, she seems to have positively preferred not to broadcast the
LCM’s activities and successes:
‘I admired very much in Rome the love of hiddenness’
The lengthy process of the first foundation outside Europe – at Sydney
in Australia – illustrates very well the careful and considered way in
which Mary Potter approached expansion of the LCM.
A request to establish a house there was first made when the Bishop of
Ossory in Ireland, Patrick Moran, was appointed Archbishop of Sydney
in 1884. Rather than leap at the chance, Mary Potter had many
reservations. The LCM Rule had still not yet received official
approbation; she wasn’t sure she had enough sisters to spare some going
away to Australia; and because of the distance involved she knew very
well that she might never get to see them again.
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As she writes in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘The foundation in Australia was a great anxiety and I am glad it was so,
as it caused much more prayer than I should otherwise have given.’
But Archbishop Moran was very persistent. When he came to Rome in
the middle of the following year to be created a cardinal, he again
approached Mary Potter, and this time also enlisted the help of
Monsignor Kirby, Rector of the Irish College there, who he knew was a
friend of the LCM. Cardinal Moran said he would be returning to
Australia in September and was planning to take some members of the
Sacred Heart and also of the Faithful Companions of Jesus back with
him, and very much hoped he could take some LCM Sisters too. This
time Mary Potter agreed, but her anxieties continued. One of the most
difficult decisions for her was who to send as Superior. As she writes in
her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘Then we finally decided and Mother Michael was chosen as Superior.
But I had no rest night or day and this is one of the instances in which I
crossed the Council.’
With only three weeks to go before the Sisters sailed, it seems Mary
Potter was still having doubts about who it was best to send as Superior
– understandable, perhaps, given that she may never see them again and
they would have to ensure that the foundation in Australia possessed the
unique LCM spirit. She writes that she ‘[made] a pilgrimage to pray’,
going to the Church of S. Bartholomew:
‘I rarely or never went out at that time, but whilst at the Church the
thought came to me so strongly to replace Mother Michael by Mother
Raphael that I could not resist it.’
It was necessary to send a telegram to England, as this was where most
of the Sisters were travelling from. The fact that Mary Potter did this at
such a late stage, and as she says, she was going against the Council’s
previous decision, indicates just how important it was to her to ensure
exactly the right person oversaw the new foundation in Australia.
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Mary Potter’s explanation for choosing Mother Raphael, who was only
25 at the time, together with Mother Rose from Rome, to head up the
LCM group going to Australia – there were also four other LCM sisters
accompanying them: Pius Kelly, Josephine Wroughton, Pierre Dillon
and Brigid Rosser – is very illuminating of what she felt were the
important qualities in an LCM sister:
‘[Mother Raphael and Mother Rose] were well-matched; Mother
Raphael’s spirituality and Mother Rose’s order and discipline set a
stamp on the Little Company in Australia. They were both refined and
Mary-like, with a high religious feeling, which the Australian Sisters
have certainly inherited from them.’
It’s very telling that no mention of the Sisters’ skill at nursing is made
by Mary Potter when recommending them here. Likewise, in a letter of
encouragement to the pioneer Sisters before they sailed, she stresses
only their spiritual mission:
‘Little ones and older, God bless all. Let us cluster round our Mother’s
Heart and think of this new honour that we are to give her by spreading
her work in this far-off land. Happy those who are called to cross the
wide Ocean on this mission. Their Mother will be with them in a very
special manner, if they are faithful to grace and are generous, not
shrinking from the suffering, from privations, from much that it is not
possible to say beforehand, but which may be trying to your nature,
unless you are resolved to suffer all for love of Jesus, to keep happy
though sick and suffering, to hide from others any pain of mind or body
you may feel, to have a smile and a kind word for all, to do all the acts
of charity possible and to keep the spirit and even exercises of your
Rule.’ (Quoted in Elizabeth West, p.155)
What is perhaps even more remarkable is that on top of all this careful
preparation, Mary Potter decided that she must also see the Sisters when
they called at Italy on the way to Australia, despite the fact that it would
involve her making a dangerous journey (given her health) from Rome
to Naples.
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On the way back to Rome from Naples, Mary Potter had decided to visit
the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Counsel at Genazzano. The journey
there was incredibly difficult, as Mary Potter was ‘feverish and
suffering greatly’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.166), and there was a ‘fierce
thunderstorm’ (Eve Healy, p.189) to contend with. When they
eventually arrived, ‘Mother Mary, thoroughly fatigued, collapsed, and
had to be carried straight to bed.’ (Eve Healy 189)
But they were able to take her in a carrying chair to Our Lady’s Shrine
for Mass each day, and on the second evening of this Mary Potter
apparently amazed everyone by being able to get out of bed and walk
around. Not surprisingly, many proclaimed this sudden transformation a
miracle, but interestingly Mary Potter herself saw it differently:
‘I am not a theologian and do not know what a miracle means in
theological terms. I forbade the Sisters saying that I had a miracle,
thinking that a miracle meant a perfect cure, which I certainly had not,
having the same heart. It seems to me a better phrase to say a 'grace.' In
ordinary life a mother prays for a sick child and we say she obtains a
grace when it recovers. We do not say she obtained a miracle. But this I
can say that perhaps I never before knew, or at any rate had forgotten,
what an ordinary state of life was like. To be able to walk and move
about like others, without pain or inconvenience, was a new sensation,
and a most enjoyable one, and lasted for perhaps upwards of two years,
when other ailments brought me to my former state.’
According to the journal kept by the Sisters travelling to Australia, they
received a rapturous welcome on arrival:
‘While we were going up the Harbour we heard on all sides from the
boats and steam launches that had come out to meet [our ship]:
“Welcome to Australia! Three cheers for the good nuns! Good luck and
prosperity attend you!” (Quoted in Eve Healy, p.190)
And after landing:
‘As we drove along the people in the streets called out as we passed,
“Welcome to Australia! Good luck to you and God bless you!” Some of
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the old women went down on their knees in the street, invoking all
kinds of blessings on us. People were out on balconies waving to us, and
there were such crowds on all sides”’ (p.191)
The Sisters were given ‘a most hearty welcome’ by the Irish Sisters of
Charity, who had prepared the ‘cottage’ rented for them by Cardinal
Moran in Darlinghurst Road, where the LCM Sisters were going to live
initially. They soon expanded, with Cardinal Moran giving them land in
another Sydney suburb, Petersham, to build a convent and hospital for
women and children. A novitiate was also opened, as well as a nightrefuge for homeless women and children, a soup kitchen, a chapel for
the hospital, and a cottage for blind children. A new convent was built
in 1907 and a private hospital in 1911.
In another Sydney suburb, Ryde, ‘an excellent Sydney Catholic, Mr. T.
J. Dalton’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.189), approached Cardinal Moran,
offering him buildings and land for ‘a hospital, directed by a Religious
Community, for women suffering from nervous and mental diseases’
(p.189; apparently Mr Dalton’s daughter was herself a sufferer).
Cardinal Moran in turn suggested the LCM administer this, and some
Sisters from Petersham arrived in Ryde in 1891. Then in 1893 ‘Mother
Mary Joseph (O’Regan) who had trained as a mental nurse at the Royal
Creighton Institute in Scotland, arrived as the first Superior of “Mount
St. Margaret,” Ryde.’ (pp.189-90). This was ‘the first…hospital in
Australia where women Religious care[d] explicitly for women afflicted
with nervous complaints’ (p.190)
A third house was also established, this time away from the Sydney
area, in Adelaide. A Miss Bessie Baker and her niece, Miss Ross,
owners of a convent and hospital there, had first sought to bring the
LCM to Adelaide in 1887. Then, on a visit to Rome 12 years later, they
renewed their request to Mary Potter, and the following year, 1900, a
group of LCM sisters from Sydney, headed by Mother M. Agatha,
moved to Adelaide. The building there was not in a great state, but at
the end of 1905 the foundation-stone of the new Calvary Hospital was
laid.
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This expansion didn’t come without problems though. There seems to
have been similar struggles between Cardinal Moran and Mary Potter
over the direction of the new foundation as there had been between
Mary and Bishop Bagshawe, as well as the LCM sisters themselves
acting without keeping her properly informed. At one point Cardinal
Moran threatened the closure of all the LCM houses; at another, five
LCM Sisters considered separating from the parent stem. Propaganda in
Rome often had to intervene in these struggles.
Despite the difficulties though, Father Dougherty writes that:
‘Within eleven years [of the LCM coming to Australia] the Cardinal
was able to declare publicly: “The sisters are called the ‘Little
Company’ but they might be advised to change their name to the ‘Great
Company,’ having achieved such great results. It is hard to believe that
they could have achieved so much with the little they had.”’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.188)
Mary Potter also recalled two sisters from Australia in 1895 specifically
‘to assure herself that the spirit of the Little Company of Mary had been
maintained after ten years’ separation’ (Eve Healy, pp.207-8). Even
after this, she still wanted to make a trip to Australia if she could, and in
1899 visited Lourdes, apparently saying to Mother Philip ‘If I am cured
I shall return to Rome immediately and prepare for the journey to
Australia’ (Quoted in Eve Healy, p.217). Unfortunately, the opposite
happened at Lourdes, and ‘[Mary Potter] became very ill; she had a bad
haemorrhage from the lungs, which caused great anxiety to her
companions’ (p.217)
Florence’s English-speaking community at this time was ‘larger than in
Rome’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.169), and so it’s not surprising that there
was much demand for LCM Sisters to nurse there. This led to requests
for a branch house to be opened in Florence, but at first Mary Potter felt
there was already more than enough work in Rome itself to be able to
spare any Sisters to establish another house in Florence. However, in
December 1885 the Canons of the Duomo of Florence wrote to Mary
Potter pressing her to open a house there, and the following month she
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received a letter from two Scottish Presbyterian women – the Misses
Murray - which appears to have finally persuaded her. They wrote
saying:
‘how anxious we are to establish a branch of your excellent Order of
Sisters in Florence. We shall never forget the comfort and support we
derived from having [one of your Sisters] with us in our great trouble
last June, and feel that nothing could be kinder towards the sick and
suffering in general than to secure the abiding presence of some of the
Sisters in this town.’ (Quoted in Eve Healy, pp. 193-4)
They offered to provide the necessary accommodation, beds and
furniture, and also pointed out that an American doctor ‘promised his
help…and again repeated his continued admiration of [the Sisters’]
excellent nursing.’ (Quoted in Eve Healy, p.194)
And they also noted that the two LCM Sisters currently nursing in
Florence ‘both looked very tired’, and so offered to provide them with
‘a good rest’ at their own home before they travelled back to Rome.
With the permission of the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Bausa, a
foundation was therefore made (started by Mother Cecilia) in Florence
in 1886, firstly in an apartment in Via del Campuccio, then at a house in
Via Ferruccio, which became the Convent of the Precious Blood.
In her ‘Autobiographical Notes’, Mary Potter writes that ‘We always
look back to those days in Via Ferruccio as very happy ones’. One
reason for this was that she was able to establish a course of sermons in
English at the convent Chapel, given by ‘the noted preacher’ (Patrick
Dougherty, p.170) Monsignor Harrington Moore. These appear to have
been very successful, leading to ‘some notable converts’
(‘Autobiographical Notes’).
As a result, Mary Potter concluded that:
‘there can be little doubt that the Little Company of Mary is meant to
help the priest in his labours, as the Houses seem especially blessed and
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especially happy where they do so…In Via Ferruccio…the expression
was used that the place seemed full of the Holy Ghost, and I do not
think the same has been since the mission was separated from the
Sisters. It may have been one of my many mistakes.’
This is an important point. Although it hadn’t been given the same
primary position in the rules and constitutions which the work of
nursing the sick and dying had, mission work was still very much to be
an important element in any LCM Sister’s life, and it is something that
Mary Potter herself continually stressed.
The rules and constitutions state that:
‘The sisters of the Little Company will also employ themselves in
bringing back sinners to repentance, and in converting heretics and
infidels; visiting, exhorting, and instructing for that purpose those whom
they know to be in need of their help; but always with the co-operation
and under the direction of the priest of the parish to which such persons
belong.’
And Mary Potter in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’ comments that:
‘Mission work is one of the works of the Little Company of Mary. It is
very evident that God wishes us to be occupied with His vast family,
since He has so blessed this work wherever the Little Company of Mary
have engaged themselves helping the priest with his mission work what blessings have been attached, what souls saved. Conversions,
instructions, united with our interior life, help to our own sanctification
as well as to the extension of Christ's kingdom. The presence of the
Sisters gave a certain spirit to the people, if we may express it so. The
seeing in practice what the priest preached was more effectual than the
sermons themselves.
‘Religion was not then theoretical. They saw it practically carried out the sick administered to, the suffering consoled and comforted, the poor
fed, the children instructed and the ignorant learned to love our Lord
and His Spirit entered into them.’
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According to Father Dougherty, ‘the [LCM] Register shows that in 1888
the Irish Sisters formed over half the entire community’ (p.179, n.3).
There had been postulants from Ireland for many years, some of them
even sent by Father Selley, who ‘had joined the Augustinians in Dublin
in 1878’ (p.179, n.3). But in 1888 a foundation was also made in
Ireland.
Three years earlier, the wife of Count Arthur Moore of Moresfort,
Tipperary, had become dangerously ill while they were in Rome. She
was nursed by Mother Catherine and the Count made a private vow that
if his wife got better he would do all he could to bring the LCM Sisters
to Ireland. As Mary Potter writes in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘Mrs. Moore (Count Moore's wife) was taken ill, and in her illness she
got the good thought that she would like to provide her poor people on
the estate in Ireland with the same comfort in sickness that she
had…Count Moore himself told me how one day when she was very ill
and he had gone to St. Peter's to pray for his wife to whom he was so
tenderly devoted, he made a vow that he would bring the Little
Company of Mary to Ireland, if his wife recovered, and when she was
better, he did his best to fulfill this vow, but it was not so easy.’
It was only two years later, in 1887, that the Count was finally able to
say that Dr O’Dwyer, the Bishop of Limerick, could offer the Sisters the
long disused St John’s Hospital as a base in Ireland. This hospital had
last been used during the ‘Fever Years’ (1846-50), and according to Eve
Healey it was in an ‘indescribable state of filth and dilapidation’ (p.198)
when the Sisters took it over, with ‘[t]he mattresses and blankets used
by the fever patients…still there as they had left them’ (p.198).
However, ‘There was no lack of helpers, who worked eagerly with the
Sisters to convert the building into a suitable resting-place for God’s
sick people’ (p.200).
According to Father Dougherty, Count Moore was very keen that Mary
Potter be present for the opening of the hospital in 1888. This had
seemed unlikely due to her poor health. Only the previous year Dr
Hatherly, Mary Potter’s physician, had written to her that ‘I look upon
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you as a living miracle’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.178). But her health did
improve and the trip was made.
Elizabeth West, however, suggests that Mary Potter in fact travelled to
Ireland to sort out a problem that had already occurred between Mother
Veronica, the LCM Superior there, and Bishop O’Dwyer. This was only
the start of yet more difficulties between a local bishop and the LCM,
with Mary Potter writing in 1891 that ‘I do not think I mistake the
Bishop when I say that I do not think he has an idea of a noble nun.’
And according to Elizabeth West, ‘Bishop O’Dwyer’s despotism
provided much heartache for the first superior, Mother Veronica, and
the Annals of the community are testimony to his terse accusations of
disobedience, disruption and negligence’ (p.160).
But Bishop O’Dwyer was not the only difficulty Mary Potter had to
contend with in Ireland. In a remarkable passage in her
‘Autobiographical Notes’, she describes how political issues at the time,
and her defence of the Holy Father’s response to them, even led to an
apparent attempt on her life:
‘we were at Recreation in the evening. I was on my couch and the
Sisters were practising at the other end of the room. I could not get them
quite to understand what I was saying and did what I rarely do, rose up
from my couch, when a report sounded and a large piece of metal was
shot on to the couch which I had been lying on…We all looked at one
another and they left off playing as may be imagined, and cowered
round the turf fire. Whether a ladder had been made use of, which was
outside the window, whilst the men were scraping the walls, we never
knew, and we never went out to see. It was a matter we tacitly seemed
to understand we would never speak of.’
But as she goes on to write: ‘It was a dear old spot and we all felt as
much at home as in any place we had ever been in, and more than in
some.’
In fact, the Limerick foundation did lead to more houses in Ireland. As
Father Dougherty writes:
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‘the Bishop of Cloyne, Dr. Browne, called on the Foundress in Rome
and asked her to accept the nursing of the sick poor in the Fermoy
parish. Thus, in 1905, a group of sisters left Limerick for the Convent at
Fermoy, built for them by the bishop. Shortly afterwards another group
went to take up the work of administration and nursing in the
Workhouse Infirmary [later St Patrick’s District Hospital] in the same
town.’ (pp.193-4)
It seems that the difficulties between Bishop O’Dwyer and Mother
Veronica were effectively resolved when Mary Potter chose Mother
Veronica to be the first superior of the LCM in America.
The wife of Mr Charles A. Mair, a rich Chicago Catholic, had
contracted typhoid while they were visiting Rome in 1899, and was
looked after by the LCM. Even though his wife died from her illness,
Mr Mair was so impressed by the care provided by the LCM that he
promised Mary Potter before he left Rome that he would finance an
LCM foundation in his home town of Chicago. As Merrie Ann Hall
writes in Women of Hope – The Story of The Little Company of Mary
Sisters in America, at that time Chicago was ‘America’s second-largest
city with a population of one million’ (p.39).
It was a few years, however, before the LCM was in position to take up
Charles Mair’s offer. But in a letter dated September 8, 1892 he wrote to
Mary Potter:
‘[I] have today, had my interview with Archbishop Feehan to ask his
permission for your Order to enter this Diocese and his approval of my
enterprise in bringing your Sisters out. His Lordship was very glad to
give his endorsement and approbation…The field is great here and I
have no question whatever as to the success of the venture.’ (Quoted in
Merrie Ann Hall, pp.35-6)
The three sisters chosen to travel to Chicago in April the following year
were Mother M. Veronica Dowling, Mother M. Patrick Tuohy, and
Sister M. Philomena Haslem. Initially they stayed in the Convent of the
Good Shepherd, but then they were able to move into ‘a small cottage
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located at 4124 Indiana Avenue’ (p.41) which Mr Mair had rented for
them. More sisters soon arrived to join the three pioneers and a purposebuilt convent, chapel, novitiate and hospital were all eventually built.
The Archbishop of Malta, Monsignor Pietro Pace, first heard about the
LCM on a visit to Rome in 1893. He was concerned about the standard
of nursing in his diocese and so appealed to Mary Potter for her to send
some Sisters to Malta. The following year, four LCM sisters, headed by
Mother Xavier, travelled to the house in Cathedral Street, Sliema – a
suburb of Valetta – which a committee of ladies under Monsignor
Emmanuele Debono had rented for them. This same committee was also
behind the building of a new convent called ‘Casa Leone XIII’ – in
honour of the Episcopal Jubilee of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII – which
the Sisters moved into in 1900.
Although ‘Casa Leone’ had accommodation for a few patients, a proper
hospital on an adjacent site was eventually built and opened on June 3rd
1910 by the Governor of Malta, Sir Leslie Rundle. According to Malta
and The Little Company of Mary, ‘The hospital was constructed through
the munificence of two Maltese ladies, Emilia, widow of American born
Henry Lyman Clapp, and her sister, Miss Mary Zammit’ (p.10), and was
known as the Zammit-Clapp Hospital. Three years later, just before
Mary Potter died, a chapel was added.
Further expansion also occurred back in England during the late 1890s,
when three new foundations were made in the Archdiocese of
Westminster. At the invitation of Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of
Westminster, Mary Potter had sent Mother Catherine and Mother de
Sales to help the mission of St Mary and St Michael in the East End of
London. This mission was run by Canon Akkers, the rector of St Mary
and St Michael, along with his curate, Father Peter Amigo (who later
became Bishop of Southwark), and the Jesuit Father Bernard Vaughan.
Mother Catherine and Mother de Sales leased two small houses in
Commercial Road (which became St Joseph’s Convent, opened January
1896) and as Eve Healy writes: ‘The early days were marked by
considerable poverty. They had scarcely any furniture and for a long
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time a packing-case did duty as a refectory table’ (p.212) – even on the
occasion when Cardinal Vaughan himself came for tea.
The East End then was of course an incredibly poor part of London.
Elizabeth West writes that the Sisters’ house ‘was open to those who
needed to come for food, help or support’ (p.161), and the Sisters (two
more had joined Mothers Catherine and de Sales) ‘nursed the sick,
visited lapsed Catholics, instructed converts and attended to the needs of
the poor and homeless’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.196).
One task in particular for the Sisters was to accompany one of the
mission Fathers when he went out in the evening to preach in the
neighbouring courts and alleys, which at that time were very much the
archetypal East End slums. The community bell would be rung to
summon people to hear the sermon, and hymns would be sung
accompanied by one of the Sisters playing a harmonium on wheels.
Father Dougherty notes that Father Bernard Vaughan, in particular, was
a ‘fiery preacher on the Sins of Society’ (p.197).
Elizabeth West writes that ‘Commercial Road was the place where
Potter’s love for the poor found its satisfaction and, next to Hyson
Green, was perhaps the truest expression of the mission work of the
Little Company of Mary.’ (p.162).
And as Mary Potter herself wrote in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’:
‘There is something in mixing with the poor which keeps us close to
God, and after my return from Rome, with all its grandeurs and graces,
with the constantly seeing the Holy Father, with the holy priests who
were our true friends, the visiting the shrines, the bodies of Saints, the
magnificent functions of the Church, with all this when I went again
among the poor, I said, "Life is worth loving," as I carried one little
thing or another to relieve the sick and brought the love of God into
their souls.’
Mary Potter visited Commercial Road in 1897 when she was trying to
sort out some difficulties with the second foundation to be made in the
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Archdiocese of Westminster, on the other side of London, at Isleworth.
As Father Dougherty writes, ‘a charitable convert, Mrs.
Monteith…[had] offered her home to the Little Company for a Convent
and Nursing Home’ (p.197). One of the donor’s stipulations though was
that she and her daughter were to remain living there, and also that ‘a
section of the house be reserved for crippled children’ (p.197).
Even though some Sisters had already moved into the property Gunnersbury House - Mary Potter chose to stay at Commercial Road
instead, as Cardinal Vaughan hadn’t allowed reservation of the Blessed
Sacrament at Isleworth, and the church there was too far away for Mary
Potter to travel to apparently. This incident perhaps best illustrates the
importance Mary Potter placed on having the Blessed Sacrament in the
LCM’s convents. As Eve Healy writes, ‘she never felt a house was
really founded until Our Lord was present therein.’ (p.214)
The story is that when Cardinal Vaughan arrived at Commercial Road
he found Mary Potter praying to St. Mary Magdalen. When he asked her
why, Mary told him she was asking the saint to help with getting the
Blessed Sacrament reserved at Gunnersbury House. Of course, the
Cardinal quickly got the message, and said she needn’t trouble Mary
Magdalen as he would give the necessary permission.
After that, Mary Potter went to stay in the Isleworth convent. According
to Mary Campion in Place of Springs, the first three Sisters to live there
were Sisters Ethelreda, Baptist and Ursula (p.32), and she writes that
Father Selley was the priest to say Mass and bless the house on July
27th, 1897. She also notes that ‘In 1899 it bec[ame] the novitiate and
within five years from the opening, Bishop Bagshawe c[ame] to live at
Gunnersbury House. The dust ha[d] long settled on old controversies
and he celebrate[d] his golden jubilee with the Blue Sisters, [wa]s made
a titular archbishop and officiate[d] at many clothing and profession
ceremonies.’ (p.33)
While Mary Potter was at Isleworth she also dealt with a proposal for a
third house to be opened in the Westminster Archdiocese. A committee
of Catholic ladies under Viscountess Encombe wanted to establish a
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home for unmarried, first-time mothers, and were proposing that the
LCM run it. Mary Potter clearly felt this work would appeal to the
Maternal Heart of Mary, and so the committee bought a house in
Charlotte Street in central London. When the work was transferred in
1911 to 51, Marlborough Place, in St John’s Wood, it was called the
‘Guardian Angels Home’. As Eve Healy writes, ‘The
Community…devote[d] themselves to helping these girls spiritually and
materially. They encourage[d] and fit[ted] them to face the world again
and to commence their lives afresh.’ (p.215)
It was on the return journey from her final visit to England in 1899 that
Mary Potter was able to make another foundation in Italy. On the way
back to Rome she stopped at Fiesole, just outside Florence, where a
disused property known as Villa San Girolamo had been offered for rent
to the LCM. This building had been the residence of the Superior
General of the Jesuits until four years previously, and his English
Assistant, Father Chandlery – a confessor to the LCM – had suggested
that Mary Potter turn it into a convalescent home, as its position near the
summit of the hill seemed ideal for that purpose. Mother Cecilia, the
Superior of the Convent of the Precious Blood at Florence, had already
visited it to look into the idea, and suggested that the LCM go ahead,
and on November 18th 1899 Mary Potter and four Sisters from Rome
moved in. The Bishop of Fiesole, Monsignor David Camilli, celebrated
the first Mass there, and also sang High Mass at the formal opening
three days later, assisted by the Canons of the San Romolo Cathedral
and the students of the seminary.
However, the previously disused house was very cold and damp, and
not long after her arrival Mary Potter caught pneumonia, followed by
rheumatic fever. Perhaps it was not the most auspicious start for a
building intended to be a convalescent home. Nevertheless, it did go on
to become the location of the novitiate and in 1907 the LCM was able to
buy the whole property from the Society of Jesus.
The final country which Mary Potter was able to make a foundation in
during her lifetime was Africa. In 1902, Bishop Hugh McSherry, Vicar
Apostolic of Cape of Good Hope, Eastern District, South Africa, visited
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her and asked if she would establish a house at Port Elizabeth. Again, it
was another two years before the LCM was in a position to respond to
his request, but in 1904 four Sisters – Antonia Daly (who was to be the
Superior), Perpetua Flanagan, Gonzaga Carpenter and Magdalen Lynch
– made the five-week journey from Australia to Port Elizabeth.
They give a very vivid account of this marathon voyage in the Log
Book which they kept. On the ship they were warned that ‘all hands
a’board from the skipper to the scullery boy were a lot of uncultivated
tigers’ (Quoted in To Answer Her Call…the Sisters of the Little
Company of Mary in Southern Africa by Phyllis Konya, p.14), and
naturally ‘We stepped on shore mentally asking Our Lady’s help and
protection as she knew what it was to be a stranger in a strange land –
and that too Africa.’ (p.14) Once on shore, they were ‘very amused at
the dress of the Zulus who drew rickshaws and terribly afraid it would
be our way of conveyance.’ (p.14) Unfortunately, Mother M. Antonia
arrived ‘sick from one of her attacks – her temperature being 102F.’
(p.15)
The Sisters set up in a small house in Prospect Hill, near the Cathedral,
which the Bishop provided for them (though it was apparently ‘dirty and
in bad repair’ when they moved in). As Phyllis Konya writes in To
Answer Her Call…the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary in Southern
Africa, ‘The Nazareth and Dominican sisters had thoughtfully stocked
the cupboards with groceries and the housekeeper at the presbytery sent
a shoulder of lamb for their first dinner.’ (p.15)
However, as Eve Healy notes:
‘The first years in Africa were a period of great privation. There were
very few Catholics in Port Elizabeth, and the people were bigoted and
hostile. It was some time before the Sisters gradually broke down the
prejudice. (p.221)
But in 1910 they were able to move to a larger house, called ‘Avoca’,
just outside the boundary of Port Elizabeth in Walmer, which also
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provided accommodation for 10 patients, and the prejudice against the
Sisters gradually decreased.
These very varied responses to requests from around the world for the
Little company of Mary to expand into other countries are well summed
up by Eve Healy:
‘Thus the years 1885-1904 marked the dispersion of the Little Company
of Mary into four great continents – Europe, Australia, America and
Africa…carrying the badge of the Maternal Heart to all parts of the
world…mothering the sick, infirm and dying, whether rich or poor, old
or young, black or white.’ (pp.221-2)
But it is important to remember, as Father Dougherty points out, that:
‘Though it is quite clear that Mother Potter contributed to the incipient
revival of nursing in many countries, she did not set out to promote the
reform. Her interest in nursing, her efforts to train sisters to be zealous
and capable nurses, and even her foundation of hospitals, rose from
quite another and higher motive. Nursing has ever been the principal
exterior work of the Little Company, simply because it was, according
to the Foundress, the activity which would most help the sisters to carry
out their special apostolate, perpetual prayer for and personal assistance
of the dying’ (p.232, n.3)
This point was already clearly made in some of Mary Potter’s earliest
writings on how an LCM sister should care for the dying:
‘regarding the sister to whose charge the dying person has been given, it
must be remembered that the soul is her one principal work. All her
other duties are to be subservient to it…She must be a mother to that
soul, and not cease her continual inward prayer in all the outward works
she performs for the sufferer. They need not distract her. In washing the
sick person, she may be praying that the soul likewise may be cleansed
from the slightest stain of sin. In giving food, the sister can be praying
that her charge may be strengthened by the Bread of Life and so on. The
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sister may not consider it is a light duty she has undertaken, but a very
solemn and serious one.’
Likewise, Mary Potter later explained how even the ‘outward works’
themselves have a directly religious significance. In a letter to Mother
Cecilia, she pointed out that in nursing a sick patient, rather than being
in Church, she was still carrying out a religiously rewarding act:
‘You are on Calvary now, watching and tending Our dear Lord in the
person of your patient, thinking of His Wounds and weariness as you
endeavour to relieve your sick one. Let every little action, the shaking of
the pillows, the drink given when thirsty, the wash which so refreshes
the poor sufferer, be done as though for Jesus Himself, and your Lent
will indeed pass well, and He who will reward the cup of cold water
given in His Name, will on that glad day of His Glory turn with His
Loving smile and holding out His Arms to His little one with those
beautiful eyes of His full of love saying, "I was sick and you visited
Me." Then will He take the hands that tended the sick for His sake,
within His own Hands and take you to visit Him in His Heavenly Home,
there to abide with Him forever.’
Likewise, the hospitals and convents that Mary Potter built and founded
around the world were intended to preserve the same intimate and
homely spirit that had inspired her from the beginning. As Eve Healy
writes:
‘It was her desire that all should feel “at home” in her houses. Hospitals
and homes were to be made bright and cheerful, and the usual
institutional atmosphere of these places was to be avoided, if possible.
She wanted everywhere a home-like spirit, which would derive its
origin from the Sisters’ devotion to the Maternal Heart of Mary.’
(pp.230-1)
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MARY POTTER’S LAST DAYS
105
Mary Potter, because of the heart and lung defects she was born with,
and the serious illnesses she regularly suffered - not to mention the two
very risky operations she underwent for removal of her breasts - had
certainly come close to death many times in her life.
As a result, she had undoubtedly spent many hours thinking about death
– both her own and that of other people. After all, the dying are the
central focus of the Congregation she founded. But prior to her own
death, there were the deaths of several people very close to her, and how
she responded to these is particularly revealing of her perspective on
death.
It might seem odd, for example, that ‘No reference regarding [Mary
Potter’s] reactions [to her mother’s death] can be found in her extant
writings’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.208). (Mrs Mary Ann Potter died on
10th January, 1900. Mary Potter was in Fiesole when she heard the
news.) But this may simply be because, as Father Dougherty points out,
Mary Potter was confident ‘of the joys which await the faithful soul’
(p.208), and she knew her mother was a faithful soul.
Much more difficult for Mary Potter had been the death of her eldest
brother William in 1895. This is the only death that she discusses at any
length in her ‘Autobiographical Notes’, and it is well worth looking at
her account of it for insight into how she responded to a death that
seemed to go against the very nature and purpose of her calling:
‘Some years since a not ordinary sorrow came to me, at least it came
with not ordinary power, by God's permission. He must have made me
capable of suffering with such intensity for His own wise ends. My
eldest brother, a most noble character, had come to a sad state of
scruples…They were afraid of his mind…[He] finally lost the Faith. He
recovered his health, married a Protestant, and lived a good life…
‘[After he] lost his wife, Phoebe, [he] lived then a most solitary life. He
was taken dangerously ill. How I prayed and felt so sure he would be all
right - a sister nursing him. She wrote so hopefully, that when going to
Mass, he told her to take money for the Offertory, but however, when
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she brought in the priest he spoke to him gently, thanking him, but
saying he did not require his services. Still I hoped, but when a Sister
brought me a telegram with his death and he would not see a priest, the
blow was terrible. The Sister who brought me the open telegram had
been that day trying me very much and seemed not softened by my
sorrow. I was going to give Novices' Chapter, and have always a fear of
not doing my duties when in great grief, so I told her quietly I should
give it all the same, but I said, "Don't let Sr. Hilda come to me, but after
Chapter tell her." She was very devoted to this Uncle, and he to her.
‘When Chapter was over I felt in such anguish, and never being able to
cry in sorrow, I thought I would be better if I was alone with my
crucifix. My door is seldom shut, but for once I shut it. I took my
Crucifix down, and knelt down and tried to let my sorrow be united with
the Passion, but that made it worse, for his noble face, calm and white,
his form like the pictures of the dead Christ came before me (and so it
came for weeks), and I thought our Lady had not sorrow like this. If she,
as she looked upon Jesus Dead could have thought as I, as I (in spirit)
looked upon His image, my poor unfortunate brother. I loved my
Crucifix and prayed and offered my pain. No tears came, but it was well
they did not, for I was not left alone long. A knock came to the door,
"The Duchess of Newcastle wants to see you, Mother." I got up, bathed
my eyes heavy with the tears unshed, and had to give attention to her
Ladyship until Benediction. Then again was that cold white noble form
before me, and so it went on for weeks. My heart pierced and I did not
feel how Heaven could take the pain away, though, of course, I believed
blindly.
‘I spoke to no one for a long time of my grief, but at last I did. I wrote
the whole and I was relieved by an act of obedience. My Director, the
saintly Father Armellini, said he read the letter twice, prayed for light,
invoked a Saint for whose Canonization he had worked successfully etc.
brought forward a recent most interesting revelation of our Lady and
how God saves those related to religious. Father Armellini bid me pray
for my poor brother, and I see now much that is comforting. His very
quiet refusal to the last to have the Sacraments showed he was in good
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faith. He was loving God, reading the Imitation, left money for the Little
Sisters of the Poor.’
This whole passage illustrates just how affected Mary Potter could be by
a death, but also how she goes about resolving the pain and distress it
causes her. It was undoubtedly the difficulty her eldest brother’s death
presented to her beliefs, and the fact that he was after all one of her
brothers, that caused her such an intensity of feeling and thought.
As she wrote to her brother George: 'You cannot think how my vocation
came into my mind whilst praying for poor Willie.' (Letter dated 25 th
March, 1895, quoted in Patrick Dougherty, p.210)
Another family death which Mary Potter confronted was that of her
niece Marie. As Father Dougherty writes: 'Perhaps the most beautiful of
all Mother Potter's letters are those she wrote to her brother, Thomas,
during the last illness of his second daughter, Marie.' (p.199)
Marie was 'one of a group which came out from England early in 1901
to be the first postulants in the newly-begun novitiate at Fiesole' (p.199).
She was soon found to be 'suffering from advanced tuberculosis'
(p.200), with little hope of recovery.
As Father Dougherty writes:
'The Foundress, after breaking the sad news to Thomas and Marguerite,
wrote to them regularly; she encouraged them not to disappoint God at
this time of trial but to find peace in the thought of His Providence, and
in their own great privilege of being able to offer their daughter to Him
"as a fruit of the Passion, that nothing of this world has tarnished".'
(p.200)
Marie, by her own request, was able to receive the habit of the LCM
before she died, becoming Sister Mary Florida, 'in honour of St.
Floridus, whose remains lay under the High Altar of the Convent
Chapel' (p.200). Mary Potter wrote after her death to Thomas and
Marguerite:
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'It is useless to say, 'Be comforted and weep not.' I say 'Let your hearts
give vent to your sorrow,' for there is One who well understands the
human heart - its Creator. 'And Jesus wept.' I have a hope that Our Lady
will let her fresh flower, your Florida, bring you peace and perfect
resignation...your souls are linked to God now, as never before, for part
of yourselves, the life you brought into the world, is now united forever
to the Eternal Life.' (Quoted in Patrick Dougherty, pp.200-1)
Mother Magdalen, who died in Florence on July 29th, 1898, was ‘the
only one of the original Hyson Green group to predecease [Mary
Potter].' (Patrick Dougherty, p.202). She had been sent to Florence to
have a painful throat examined, and was found to have 'inoperable
cancer of the throat’ (p.204). Unfortunately, the throat cancer meant she
was unable to receive Holy Communion.
However, it is clear that Mary Potter had no worries about Mother
Magdalen’s soul after death. In a letter dated 2nd July, 1898, she wrote:
'Dear Mother Magdalen, your last days seem to me like a glorious
sunset.' (Quoted in Patrick Dougherty, p.205) And in writing to the
Sisters throughout the world after Mother Magdalen’s death, she
stressed Mother Magdalen's spirit: 'Beautiful as was her exterior life, to
me it was made superhumanly beautiful by the spirit which
accompanied those acts of charity with which her days, nay, even her
nights often, were filled' (Quoted in Patrick Dougherty, p.206)
In writing about Mary Potter’s own final years, her biographers have
tended to highlight the undoubted physical pain and difficulties she
suffered:
‘During the last few years of her life Mother Mary was a complete
invalid, tied to her couch of pain. She became a victim, offering herself
continually to God in the place of others who suffered…[However, her]
door was always open, and neither her physical sufferings nor her
weakness were permitted to interfere with the duties of her office. ’ (Eve
Healy, pp.244-5)
109
‘An invalid, who passed her days and nights in great pain, she was
scarcely able to grope from her cell to her sitting-room or the chapel
tribune where she loved to pray, or, perhaps, to the sunny terrace
nearby.’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.242)
‘Increasing physical debility prevented her from visiting the far-flung
houses of the institute, and slowly her control over the congregation
became less and less…The compromises effected by the search for
approbation and the expansion of the congregation brought her suffering
– the more so as she witnessed the ever-increasing movement into
institutional care and the corresponding weakening of the missionary
endeavour of the congregation…Isolated from the community by an
ever increasing severity of illness, the remaining years of her life were
spent in prayer, in writing to her beloved sisters, and in filling notebook
after notebook with a journal of her inner life.’ (Elizabeth West, pp.1801)
It is in fact these notebooks which portray a quite different view of
Mary Potter’s final days to the more external perspective that the
biographers have emphasized.
In the notebooks, Mary Potter is continually addressing God, Jesus,
Mary and many other religious figures. She chooses to use a more
archaic form of expression – lots of ‘Thou’, ‘Thee’, ‘hast’, ‘dost’, etc. –
perhaps emulating the Biblical verses she is continually calling to mind
and discussing (particularly the ‘Seven Words spoken by Our Lord from
the Cross’). And she many times returns to the phrases she heard all
those years ago during her key mystical experiences – particularly
‘Honour the Heart of My Mother’ and ‘It is My Will that you do this
work’. She often says she hasn’t done enough in carrying out the work
entrusted to her, but it is always a spiritual work that she is discussing. It
is interesting that there is not a single mention of nursing in the more
than 40,000 words of these notes I have read.
There is, however, much enlightening discussion of death and dying:
‘My God, I have longed for death from my youth up, and often have I
thought it near. Is it so now? Life grows more and more beautiful and its
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lovely work for You, my God and yours. Yet, I trust You have work for
me in heaven? Does not an inward voice seem to say, there is work I
can do for my children in heaven that I cannot do on earth? I offer again
my life, which I have never loved as now.’ (Obedience Notes Vol. 1)
It is clear from the above and the many other notes Mary Potter wrote
on the subject of death towards the end of her life that she saw death
both as a positive step in the journey of the soul – taking it closer to God
– and not at all the separation from those still living which so many
people fear:
‘May the one who comes after me be happy in her maternal work, as the
mother, who is bidding you "goodbye", and by goodbye, I do not mean
a separation, for I shall be with you.’
While fully acknowledging that the process of dying can be painful, she
believed that this pain, when offered to God, can also produce great
good – that any pain which could not be alleviated had a positive
purpose when seen in the light of God’s Will:
‘The pain of death is changed into a joy by the thought of being nearer
to God, of soon coming to be with Him.’
‘To work for Thee, O Lord my God, is sweet, to die sweeter when it is
Thy Will! Call me and I will come.’
Physical death is not the complete obliteration it is commonly thought to
be:
‘I shall live again in my children. I have incorporated myself with my
work, though I may not see on earth its accomplishment’
In another passage, she once again reflects on the words spoken to her
during her key mystical experiences, and how the fruit of them lives on
irrespective or her own physical existence:
‘The words so lovingly spoken sunk into my soul, "I have chosen you
that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should
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remain" (Jn 15:16). Yes, the fruit, the grace to the dying remains. It is
forever. The work most needed of all works – the dying. But the fruits
also of the devotion to Our Lady, how has that spread from the lowly to
the great? May my children but spread these devotions, and remember
that what was spoken to their mother was meant also for them.’
For Mary Potter, there is no fear attached to dying. Instead there is an
opportunity for beauty and joy in death:
‘they who think I fear for my children when I am gone, understand not.
Thine they were and to Mary, Thy peerless Mother, Thou gavest them. I
have striven to keep them in her name for thee, - one in the Heart of
Mary, our Mother!’
‘The remaining hours or days or months, as it may be, shall by Thy
grace be spent in offering from what Thou didst ordain for this earth –
joy. Sweet Jesus, yes, - joy!’
‘How lovely are many deathbeds! How anxious are those, leaving this
world, to feel some they love best will be looked to. "You will look
after…" mentioning wife, child, mother etc. It is unselfish, noble in the
midst of the agonies of death to forget self for the loved ones they are
leaving. It is "love strong as death" (Song 8:6). Pope Leo dying, with
grasping voice spoke to the oldest cardinal, " To thee I confide the
Church."’
‘May my dying prayer be, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit
(Lk 23:46), and to the Church, my work, and yet sweet Mother, not my
work but thine."’
Mary Potter‘s thirst for suffering, and the seemingly paradoxical joy she
found in it, may seem odd to modern sensibilities, but as Mother Cecilia
points out, it was also unusual to those how knew her:
‘I have met many in the world who have suffered and suffered patiently,
but never have I met one who said they loved it; but Our Mother did.
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She used to say, “Try to be patient with the little daily sufferings of life,
and the time will come when you will love, really love, suffering.”’
And when Mary Potter’s doctors regretted not being able to do more to
alleviate her pain, she said: ‘I have always wished to suffer for Our Lord
and I would not want to be without pain now.’ (Quoted in Patrick
Dougherty, p.246)
Patrick Dougherty writes that:
‘In 1912, the Feast of the Maternity of Our Blessed Lady, the second
Sunday in October, was celebrated at Calvary Hospital with more than
usual rejoicing. Cardinal Respighi, who celebrated the Mass, paid a long
visit to Mother Foundress; Cardinal Falconion imparted Pontifical
Benediction in the evening; many priests came to celebrate Masses at
the various altars; telegrams and letters poured in; and during the day
the Convent garden was crowded with visitors. The sisters vied with one
another to make Mother Potter happy on the day she had always
considered her feast-day.’ (pp.243-4)
But Mother Potter herself, it seems, was aware that her time was now
limited: ‘in the evening she told the sisters, “This is the last Feast of the
Maternity.”’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.244). Even so, on Easter Sunday the
following year, ‘the professed sisters…gathered to meet her for the last
time, each [receiving] a little souvenir of the visit. She embraced each of
the novices on the following day, and gave them her last message: “Be
good novices. Be happy. Love one another.”’ (p.245)
Father Dougherty writes: ‘As her heart began to fail the Foundress
longed for fresh air. She was moved from her cell to her office, which
was larger and more open. Permission was obtained for Mass to be
celebrated daily outside her door, so that she could assist at it.’ (p.246)
Eve Healy writes: ‘When it became generally known that Mother Mary
was dying, crowds of people came to enquire for her. Many begged to
be allowed to see her for the last time.’ (p.255) The visitors included
representatives of Pope Pius X and the Dowager Queen Margherita of
Italy.
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‘On 4th April, Father Luke Carey, O.F.M., one of Mother Potter’s oldest
friends in Rome, celebrated Mass, gave her Holy Viaticum, and
anointed her as he had done in Via Purificazione thirty years
previously.’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.246)
The final few days of Mary Potter’s life are well documented by one of
her original fellow pioneers at Hyson Green, Mother Cecilia:
‘Mother’s Last Communion! It seems as yesterday. It was Monday night
(April 7th 1913) and she seemed to be dying, but she rallied again. She
was asked “Would you Mother like to receive Holy Communion now.”
I can never forget her smile, her face radiant, as she answered “Ah, you
know I always want Our Lord.” Father Benedict who had just arrived
unexpectedly from England, not having heard that Mother was so ill, but
strongly urged to come to Rome, was called, and he gave her her last
Holy Communion. When the Sacred Host was held before her, she
opened her eyes with that expression of love, the last time to gaze, on
earth, on the God she had loved so well, and having received Him, all
was peace.
'The following morning, April 8th, she seemed to rouse herself,
but relapsed into a state of seeming unconsciousness. About 6 p.m. on
the next evening, April 9th, the end came. There was no struggle, no
agony, but with a loud cry, she went to Him, whom she loved and for
whom she suffered. She died just after our evening Benediction. Father
Benedict said all the prayers and gave the Last Absolution. Here I must
add that in life, Mother never missed daily Communion, “Jesus”, she
would say, “is my life” and then “When I can no longer receive Him, he
will come and take me to Himself”, and so it happened. How often she
is with me, and I feel proud and happy to be the child of such a saintly
mother, for after God, I owe my vocation to her.’
According to Father Dougherty, Mary Potter’s last words were ‘God
love all’ (p.248).
Mother Cecilia continues:
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“Two altars were erected in her room, at which Masses were offered
continuously. Prelates and priests came all uninvited, while in the
Church below Masses were going on at all the altars…She was visited
by crowds, rich and poor, especially the latter to whom she had always
been kind and generous. I can never forget one old man, who sobbed
bitterly, he and his family were sufferers in the terrible Messina
earthquake, and Mother had given them hospitality for a long time. The
Hall door had to be left open as crowds came from morning to night;
she received the veneration due to a saint. They kissed her hands, put
their rosaries on her and would have cut her habit, only we knelt there
on guard.’
This reference to Mary Potter’s similarity to a saint is also brought out
by a comment made by Cardinal Vannutelli. Mother Cecilia took the
Cardinal to Mary Potter’s room, ‘where he knelt praying for some time,
and as he rose to leave, said “Era una Santa.”’ And of course, the
process for Mary Potter’s canonisation was later begun in the 1930s,
with her being declared Venerable in 1988.
Mother Cecilia concludes:
‘Oh Mother, how beautiful you looked, too beautiful, it seemed, to have
to lose you! Her blue veil was drawn over her face, and we kissed her
dear hands for the last time. Father Benedict commenced to sing the
“Miserere”, but few of us were able to sing it but himself. Then we
followed her in procession to the Chapel, where watches were kept till
the Funeral next morning. The Chapel was crowded with such a mixed
Congregation, many of whom were non Catholics. May God be praised
and thanked for all He did in her and for her, and this through a life of
suffering, both of soul and body. She was loving and faithful to Him
unto death. God grant we may all follow her example.’
One of the pieces of paper which Mary Potter had given to Mother
Cecilia shortly before her death was headed ‘My Wishes’. This read:
‘I wish after my death, my heart to be cut out and kept in a case that can
be conveniently carried so that in every new foundation it be taken as a
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sign that my heart was in each House, in the uttermost part of the earth,
loving all alike and that all the sisters must have at heart equally the
interests of each House of the Little Company of Mary. Superiors and
sisters will altogether strive to keep union, the one house with the other,
the one province with the other. Let our Mother’s Little Company be
one, for this O my God, would I give my life, if I had any life that was
not already given to my God.’ (Obedience Notes, Vol. 1)
Eve Healy records:
‘Thus on the evening of the 11th April, in the presence of Mother
Catherine and four other Sisters, the two doctors who had attended
Mother Mary in her last illness removed the heart. It was wrapped up in
a piece of linen, and laid in a vessel containing spirits for the purpose of
preservation; it was then sealed up in a leaden case which later was
placed in a casket of alabaster, the gift of a patient to Mother Mary some
time previously.’ (pp.258-9)
Mary Potter’s coffin was buried in Rome’s Campo Verano cemetery the
next day, but as Father Dougherty writes, ‘the sisters longed for the day
when permission would be granted for them to have her mortal remains
brought back to them at Calvary Hospital.’ (p.250). This took place in
1917, and as Father Dougherty writes: ‘the architect of the Chapel was
able to point out the exact spot [Mary Potter] had chosen in 1906.’
(p.251)
Despite all that Mary Potter had achieved in her life, it is nevertheless
still true that she died hoping to do more, if it was God’s Will she
should live longer. She was still looking to establish a society of
‘Calvary priests’ (Patrick Dougherty, p.272), and still pressing for
‘Papal Consecration of the Church and the world to the [Maternal] Heart
of Mary’ (p.287). But no one doubted just how much Mary Potter had
achieved. As Eve Healy writes, ‘Letters poured in from all parts of the
world’ (p.261) – filling many folders in the archives, and describing just
what Mary Potter had meant to so many people.
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But perhaps the note which best summarises Mary Potter’s life is one
which she wrote herself. It touches on many aspects: the Divine origin
of the LCM; the life-changing nature of Mary Potter’s mystical
experiences; how the Maternal Heart of Mary shaped everything from
that time onwards; the Way of the Cross; the Precious Blood; the Holy
Spirit; the ongoing struggle to understand all that had been revealed; the
difference made to Mary Potter’s life by her union with God; and the
acknowledgement that only if someone else is able to follow the same
path – the Path of Mary - can they truly comprehended what it means:
‘The Little Company of Mary is a direct impress from the Most High.
God visited my room with a series of marvels and simple as I was,
unread in mystical theology or even ordinary writings upon devotion,
still I knew that God’s manifestation to me meant something great,
something indeed of moment. How speak of that marvelous visit – that
Presence, the question of the little atom, the answer of the Creator – the
Blessed Trinity who made thee, then the Way of the Cross, made in that
rapturous Presence. How go back and relate these things? I know not.
‘How did I dwell with thee, my Mother, as in a calm sweet sanctuary,
living by thy very breath? It seemed thy Heart animated mine. I assure
you, my Father, on different feasts I passed into different stages of the
spiritual life, as though I was with the Infant Jesus, my arms around
Mary’s neck, or I nestled in her bosom and fed upon her substance.
From the mystical birth, through the Hidden Life, the Public Life, on to
Calvary, step by step the Way of the Cross with Jesus. And then – that
wonderful union whilst standing before that crucifix, "Thou art My
spouse." "Spouse of Jesus Crucified," was the chant of angels. Washed
in the Precious Blood, wrapt, enfolded in the embrace of the Holy Spirit.
What has God not done for me? I did not know. I did not ask. Why was
this? What did it mean? Now I know, it was the way others were to
walk. May the Holy Angels lead many into this sweet way of Mary, to
which God attaches such graces.
‘It could not be explained – the union with God, the joy. The world
seemed another world and to breathe God. I would wonder whether it
was not a return almost to the original joy of the world unfallen. I went
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about my few duties the same, making home happy, entertaining my
mother and brothers, but I had many hours to myself.
‘The union with God has gone on increasing, and is not disturbed by the
various business I have to attend to, or by being very little alone. I
cannot describe it. I almost seem to cease being aware of my own
existence. God seems to have such entire possession of me. If I was to
sit and meditate as some books advise, - to think for instance, there was
a time, when I did not exist, it would be but a distraction. I love to think
of creation, and yet I seem to have been with God creating, but my
meaning may be misunderstood. Those whom God enfolds in a similar
manner alone could understand me.’ (Obedience Notes, Vol. 1)
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