Sister Consilio is Ireland’s equivalent of Mother Teresa. Many today call her ‘a living saint’. Over the last 50 years tens of thousands of people with addictions have been successfully treated in the Cuan Mhuire centres she built all over Ireland. Who is this little nun from County Kerry and what is it about her that enables people to transform their lives?
Sr Consilio never wanted to be a nun. “I always wanted a family…I thought the morning I was joining the nuns it was the end of my whole life… I just thought everything had ended.” What she longed for was a green field, a home and a family. She reluctantly joined the Mercy order in 1959 because she believed God was calling her. She felt she had to follow her conscience and give it a try but she thought she’d be out by Christmas.
Many Christmases came and went and today, as she approaches her 80th birthday, Consilio is one of Ireland’s most loved nuns. As a young religious she very quickly realised that she wasn’t cut out to be living in a traditional convent. Her calling was to help those in addiction by creating a home, a field and a family for them. In the past 50 years she has built safe places where people with the worst addictions can find a haven to face their addictions, discover themselves and begin a new life. That’s why she called Cuan Mhuire ‘the harbour of Mary’.
Connie Byrne was christened Consilio and has been a friend since childhood. “She has created in all of these houses, homes that people that are fractured can come and rebuild themselves… She believes that to create a family hub will allow a person to rebuild themselves from scratch.”
“I knew nothing about addiction, “ says Sr Consilio. “What people need most in addiction is to see the good in themselves, to love themselves.” …When people help each other they are giving away their best, the goodness to each other, and in the process they discover it themselves, which they are mostly unaware of. It’s a healing power. The healing power of love is enormous.”
She has an extraordinary ability to see goodness in those that come to Cuan Mhuire when everyone else sees failure, trouble, destruction and hopelessness: “For me to welcome anyone in the door it’s the very same as welcoming Jesus Christ himself…I find it easier to see him in that person than I do when I go to holy communion.”
PJ is currently in recovery in Cuan Mhuire in Athy. Sr Consilio...”loves everybody that comes through that gate…it feels sometimes that she’s looking straight into your soul…’There is good in there will you please let it out’, that’s what she’s saying.
Dean has completed his treatment but has stayed on in Athy to help out: “Helping people helps me…and I suppose even being told that you’re good as well because that wouldn’t have been happening to me in a long long time
Nuala McCormack, who helps run Cuan Mhuire in Newry County Down was herself a former resident: “I was suicidal, I was overdosing…I shouldn’t be alive today. I hated myself. I met Sr Consilio and she held me in her arms which felt like forever. I do believe that day she was healing me in a lot of ways” –
But Consilio takes no personal credit for the success of Cuan Mhuire. She lays it all firmly in the hands of Our Lady. “People got healed…who can heal anyone except the power of God and his mother. I never met her or saw her but I know she’s around..because the things that constantly happen couldn’t be happening; people wouldn’t be getting well; we wouldn’t have the dinner on the table.”
In 1966 Consilio bought a farm outside Athy in County Kildare for £49,000 on the strength of her faith in Our Lady. That was her only collateral. But Consilio is no evangelical who pushes Catholicism and Our Lady down people’s throats. Cuan Mhuire is for people of all faiths and none. “I don’t be telling people about our Lady, I just tell them what she did for me.”
Central to her spirituality is ‘unconditional love’ the kind of love that she experienced at home from her mother and father and it’s this kind of love that she tries to model and live in Cuan Mhuire. “The only part of us that’s capable of unconditional love is that part of us that’s made like God himself, that’s the powerhouse in every single one of us.”
Consilio’s message and spirituality is not just for those in addiction but is there for everyone who is searching for truth and fulfilment. “Happiness, joy, peace, love, goodness, giftedness, beauty, everything that is wonderful is deep within us. We’re not going to find it in our heads.” In the programme Sr Consilio demonstrates how we can move from our heads to discover the power within.
For the woman who never wanted to be a nun, Sr Consilio found her true vocation, not in the convent but in Cuan Mhuire. It was here that she got her green field, her home and her family. Connie Byrne – “She wanted a family. The convent wasn’t’ really for her it was just this very strong calling. She wanted to have children, get married like everybody else but very quickly she realised that when she became friends with these men, who loved her instantly, they were now her family and that just grew.”
Asked if she misses the intimacy of a husband and family? Sr Consilio responds: “I’m delighted that I joined the nuns…. There’s loads of scope for loving people. Just to have to concentrate on one family and one man, I wasn’t cut out for it. It would only torture him.
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For Further information contact: Reporter Mick Peelo, mick.peelo@rte.ie or mobile: 087 9240227; Producer/Director Alan Robinson, alan.robinson@rte.ie or mobile: 087 3250531