The Sisters of Mercy in New Zealand
The Sisters of Mercy were founded in Dublin in 1831 as an apostolic religious order, dedicated to providing education for poor children, refuge for exploited servant girls and help for the poor in their own homes. In 1849 their establishment at St Leo's Convent, Carlow, was visited by Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier (1801-1871), who was recruiting nuns and other staff to serve in Auckland. Pompallier had led Catholic missionary activity in New Zealand since the 1830s, and in the late 1840s was appointed Bishop of Auckland, following the division of the colony into two Catholic dioceses, based respectively in Wellington and Auckland. Mother Mary Cecilia Maher (1799-1878) and seven other sisters from the convent joined his party, which left Antwerp for New Zealand in August 1849. Maher was the Mother Superior at Carlow, and became an influential figure in the Auckland Catholic community.
The Sisters of Mercy arrived in Auckland on 9 April 1850 as the first canonically consecrated religious women to come to New Zealand. Three weeks before their arrival Philippe Viard - Bishop of the southern province of New Zealand - had formed a separate congregation of religious sisters, known as the Marist Sisters. On 19 March 1850, Viard received the profession of religious vows from three women who had trained at the teachers' college he had established at Whangaroa. The Marist Sisters, recognised as New Zealand's first indigenous religious order, began work in the diocese of Wellington in May 1850 but dispersed after 11 years.
The Sisters of Mercy were officially welcomed to the Auckland diocese by Bishop Pompallier at a ceremony held in the newly-erected St Patrick's Church - later to become a Cathedral - on 10 April 1850. Irish Catholics at this time constituted about 28 per cent of Auckland's population. The Sisters became actively involved in both the education and care of children, and supporting the sick and needy, running schools, orphanages and - later - hospitals. By the time that Pompallier left New Zealand in 1868, there were five Sisters of Mercy convents in the Diocese: St Mary's, Ponsonby (the Mother House); St Patrick's in the town itself; St John the Baptist, Parnell; St Joseph's, Onehunga; and St Cecilia's, Otahuhu. The Sisters also spread to Wellington in 1861, Hokitika in 1878, Greymouth in 1882, and Lyttelton in 1890. In 1894, a convent was established in Christchurch, while a further establishment was created in Dunedin in 1897.
The Sisters of Mercy and St Mary's Convent
After their arrival in Auckland, the Sisters initially lived in a small convent on the site of the present St Patrick's Cathedral in Wyndham Street. However, in April 1853 Bishop Pompallier purchased a 17.4 hectare (45 acre) property, the Clanaboy estate (renamed Mount St Mary) in Ponsonby, as a headquarters for the Auckland Diocese of the Catholic Church, where the Sisters set up a school for Maori girls. Within a few years overcrowding of the St Patrick's convent made the construction of a larger, purpose-built Mother-House at the Mount St Mary complex desirable. In 1859, New Street was formed and 7.2 hectares (18 acres) on the eastern side of the thoroughfare were formally handed over to the Sisters of Mercy for religious and charitable purposes, in security for sums of money received from the Sisters since their establishment in Auckland. On 8 December 1861, the foundation brick was laid for a large convent building, believed to be one of the earliest purpose-built structures of its type in New Zealand. Named St Mary's, it was erected in the Gothic Revival style, on a commanding site overlooking Freeman's Bay. The three-storey timber building was capable of accommodating 60 religious sisters, and was completed in 1862. By 1864 a school - St Mary's College - had also been added to the convent complex, fronting on to New Street. St Mary's is believed to have been one of the first purpose-built convent complexes in the country.
Construction and use of St Mary's Chapel
Work commenced on construction of the convent chapel in 1865, a short distance to the north of the main convent. The structure was the first purpose-built chapel to be erected by the Sisters of Mercy in New Zealand. The building's architect and builder was Edward Mahoney, who had also designed the convent block as well as the earlier Church of St John the Baptist, Parnell in 1861. Like the first nuns, Mahoney was of Irish origin. He later became a founding member of the Auckland Institute of Architects. The building was designed to accommodate the particular needs of the convent, adopting different internal arrangements to other Catholic churches. The altar at the eastern end was advanced into the main body of the chapel to allow room for two sacristies - one for the Sisters of Mercy and the other as a robing room for priests - while a connecting corridor to the main convent was also reported as being part of the original design. The remainder of the interior was initially intended to be divided into spaces for the Sisters in the choir, boarders from the institution in one transept, orphans in another, and room for the general public in the nave. However, the nuns' seating appears to have been installed from the outset in the nave.
Mahoney himself appears to have been responsible for the construction work, being paid some ₤545 of the total cost of the chapel, which amounted to just over ₤1121. Architecturally, St Mary's Chapel may be seen as the bridge between Mahoney's first tentative expression of the Gothic style seen in the Church of the Immaculate Conception (constructed in 1858 at Mount St Mary) and the Church of St John the Baptist (1861) Parnell; and his later, more adventurous ecclesiastical designs, which expressed Gothic Revival more fully. Gothic Revival appears to have been the usual style for early Catholic churches in the Auckland region, while the cruciform groundplan of St Mary's and other churches erected or modified in the mid 1860s marked them out from church buildings of most other denominations.
The Chapel lay at the centre of convent life following its official opening on 5 August 1866. Its functions included formal religious ceremonies, liturgical worship by the sisters and private devotions. Bishop Pompallier offered Mass at the Chapel at least twice a week, heard confessions, and preached at conferences and retreats in the chapel. The building was also the spiritual focus of pupils at St Mary's College. Use of St Mary's Chapel increased greatly in 1870 when the land on which the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception stood, passed out of the hands of the Bishop for a time. St Mary's Chapel subsequently served as a parish church for Ponsonby from 1870 until 1886, with baptisms and marriages taking place. Its use as a parish church ceased after the Church of the Sacred Heart was opened in O'Neill Street, Ponsonby in January 1887.
Mother Cecilia Maher died at St Mary's Convent on 25 November 1878, having served as superior general of the Auckland Sisters of Mercy for 22 years. She lay in state in the chapel for two days before being laid to rest in a small cemetery behind the convent. Other Sisters connected with the chapel include Mother Mary Bernard Dickson (1810-1895), who nursed in the Crimean War with Florence Nightingale and who, in 1861 (with two other Auckland Sisters of Mercy), founded the Sisters of Mercy community in Wellington. Dickson spent her last years in the Auckland convent and is also buried in the convent cemetery.
Subsequent history
Archbishops, cardinals and other eminent people of the Roman Catholic Church have visited the chapel over the years. The first New Zealander to enter the priesthood, the Very Reverend Monsignor Mahoney, preached the occasional sermon in the chapel that was designed and built by his father Edward Mahoney. A hundred years after Mother Cecilia's arrival in Auckland, St Mary's Convent remained the spiritual home of 250 Sisters of Mercy in its role as Mother-House. Possibly due to increasing numbers of nuns in the late nineteenth century, two rows of stalls were added in circa 1900. Other alterations were minor, including the replacement of shingles by corrugated iron roofing, and the installation of lighting.
By the end of the 1960s, the changing needs of religious orders following the Second Vatican Council, and the significant deterioration evident in the 107-year-old convent building, led to construction of a new accommodation block and chapel on the site of the original main convent building. In the intervening years, the Sisters had maintained their involvement in the education and care of children, visiting the sick and bereaved, and contributing to the cultural life of the city through the teaching of art, music and languages. Their many foundations included schools, orphanages and hospitals, such as the Mater Misericordiae (Mother of Mercy) hospital in Auckland. The latter was New Zealand's largest private surgical hospital for much of the twentieth century.
With the creation of a new convent building, the old chapel passed out of daily use. Alterations to the chapel during the previous century had been minor, and included the replacement of its original shingle roof with corrugated iron, and the installation of additional stalls. In 1970, demolition of the original main convent block encompassed removal of the covered corridor connecting it to the chapel. After concerted efforts made to save the building, Bishop John Mackey said the first mass in the newly restored chapel on Mercy Day, 24 September 1979. Modifications to the building included the replacement of deteriorating timber and re-roofing with asbestos tiles.
Over the next 10 years past pupils of New Zealand's most celebrated singing tutor, Dame Sister Mary Leo, performed annual fund raising concerts for restoration and maintenance of the building. Dame Sister Leo's pupils have included Kiri Te Kanawa. In 1984, the chapel was identified as the only Catholic church in New Zealand going back to Pompallier's times that remained structurally unaltered. In 1999 toilet facilities were provided in the existing sub-floor space, but are not visible or accessible from the exterior. This work, which involved a new stair wall at existing dado height facing into the chapel, is not intrusive, but has enabled greater use of the 140-year-old chapel for functions. As well as occasional use for weddings and other ceremonies, the chapel is currently used for religious education classes for pupils at St Mary's College. While the number of women religious in the country has halved since the 1970s, the Sisters of Mercy remains New Zealand's largest religious order of nuns.
