New 10-million-euro convent for Benedictine ‘Irish Dames of Ypres’ baulks secular trends

The recent opening of a new home for the Benedictine nuns at Kylemore in the remote west of Ireland, offers a rare instance of hope for those saddened at the general trend of convent closures that has been a feature for decades in Ireland.

Kylemore Abbey, located in Connemara on the so-called Wild Atlantic Way in County Galway, has been run by Benedictine nuns since 1920. A boarding school was established there, but after it closed in  2010, the nuns found themselves scattered in various buildings around the estate — and so it was decided to build a new convent, the first female Benedictine monastery to be built in 400 years in the country.

There are 15 nuns in the new convent, the premises of which was blessed recently by Archbishop of Tuam Francis Duffy, who said that the ceremony was “a rare event in Ireland and perhaps in western Europe”.

Designed by architect Michael Horan, the 10-million-euro-building enables the nuns to welcome more visitors for retreats and other religious events, in addition to the sisters making soap, candles and chocolate.

The new Benedictine monastery has become one of the most popular attractions in Connemara, drawing an estimated 500,000 visitors annually. Up to 150 people are employed there at the height of the tourist season.

Set within 1,000 acres of mountainside, the Benedictine abbey and accompanying visitor centre is owned by The Kylemore Trust, a non-profit organisation led by the Benedictine nuns, which describes Kylemore as “a place of welcome and spirituality to thousands of visitors and pilgrims”.

It all stands in dramatic contrast to general trends in Ireland when it comes to religious orders.

“Convents were once ubiquitous in Irish towns and villages,” wrote journalist Dearbhail McDonald, who also presented the RTÉ documentary The Last Nuns in Ireland earlier this year. “Indeed, the number of nuns and sisters, relative to our population, was once among the highest in the world, nuns’ wimples and habits a part of the daily fabric of Irish life.”

She notes that during the 1960s, there were about 14,000 women religious in Ireland, and adds:

“Now there are fewer than 4,000, with an average age of 80 and rising.”

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Kylemore Abbey has been run by Benedictine nuns since 1920. Kylemore’s history is rooted in the post-Reformation exodus of Catholics from these islands, which led to the foundation of a convent in Brussels by Lady Mary Percy in 1598.

Houses founded from Lady Mary’s house in Brussels were established at Cambray in France (which then moved to Stanbrook, Yorkshire) and at Ghent (which would move to Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire).

Ghent, in turn, founded several Benedictine Houses, one of which was at Ypres, also in Belgium, established in 1665.

Throughout the centuries, Ypres Abbey attracted the daughters of Irish nobility, as students and postulants. The Abbey enjoyed the patronage of influential Irish families living in exile from religious persecution.

Known as The Irish Dames of Ypres, the Benedictine nuns moved to Dublin in 1688 at the request of King James II but returned to Ypres following James’s defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

After more than two centuries in Ypres educating women and living their Benedictine lives of prayer and spirituality, their Abbey was destroyed in the early days of World War I.

The nuns fled as refugees, first to England, later to Macmine, in County Wexford, Ireland, before they eventually bought Kylemore Castle in Connemara and settled in Kylemore in December 1920.

The old convent was inside a castle built in 1868 as the home of Mitchell Henry, a doctor whose family was involved in textile manufacturing in Manchester, England.

By 2007, the nuns were living in a farmhouse on the castle grounds. In 2009, the monastery came close to closing but this was averted with help from supporters.

The nuns have maintained an educational dimension to their ministry through links with the famous (and Catholic) University of Notre Dame in the US, which has established a residential centre for both students and staff at the abbey.

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Photo: Kylemore Abbey; screenshot from kylemoreabbey.com.

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