Catherine McAuley walked through the slums of Dublin, Ireland, in the early 1800's saddened by what she saw - neglect, disease, hunger, ignorance and despair. She knew she had to do something, so she gathered people who shared her values and using an inheritance she received from a childless couple she had befriended, Catherine began her work in 1828. With her fortune, Catherine bought property on Baggot Street in an elite Dublin neighborhood.
She hired an architect to design a building with classrooms and children's dormitories, work rooms and a chapel, where young women who came to Dublin from outlying farms could learn to work as dressmakers or domestics. The building also had rooms where volunteers, who helped with her work, could live.
This first House of Mercy was opened in 1827. Church authorities suggested that Catherine establish a religious community that would ensure her work would continue after her death. But Catherine feared the establishment of a congregation would not serve the needs of those she
served, since religious women traditionally lived a cloistered life. Receiving permission from Rome that allowed her followers to move among those who were poor, Catherine and two companions pronounced perpetual vows as the first Sisters of Mercy on December 12, 1831. The Mercys were soon dubbed the"walking nuns", the first to go out from their convent to visit and care for those in need. Bishops throughout Ireland requested Catherine's sisters for other houses of mercy. Within ten years, Catherine established 12 foundations in Ireland and two in England, the first convents to be built in England since the Protestant Reformation. For more information about Catherine and the beginnings of the Sisters of Mercy, please visit the International Sisters of Mercy or the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas websites.