Sister Mary (Myriam) Molony
After her education in Dublin with the Loreto Sisters, Mary, better known as Myriam, became a governess to a French family and lived some years in France. When on holiday one Christmas, she noticed on her father’s desk a telephone directory which was open to the page “Convents”, and she saw Notre Dame des Missions. The fact that this was written in French aroused curiosity, so she rang immediately and asked to know something about the Congregation. She was invited to visit that very day. On her way back to France she visited the community in Hastings, and after meeting the sisters decided that she wanted to join the congregation. It was October 1962.
After her first Profession in 1965, Myriam was missioned to the Mother House in France where she worked with young boarders and did some catechetical studies. Then in 1970, while preparing for her Perpetual Vows, she was sent to Toulon where she was the catechist in the Marist College and in our Junior School. In September 1971, Myriam together with three other sisters from France became a Founder Member of the new mission in MBoro, near the Taïba phosphate mines in Senegal. Despite difficult and meagre beginnings, Myriam faced many challenges that she encountered with characteristic courage, happy in the thought that she was serving her beloved people of Senegal.
However, sad news awaited her when she was informed of the death of her father. He had died while the sisters were travelling by sea to MBoro. Miriam had great affection for her father so news of his death came as a great shock to her. In spite of her intense suffering and sense of loss, she showed immense courage by refusing the offer to return to Ireland to attend the funeral exclaiming, “He would be happy to see me here . . .” At the Requiem Mass celebrated in the presence of all the parishioners of MBoro, there was great affection shown to Myriam. So Myriam’s mission began with a mingling of grief and joy.
Having neither building nor finances, the priest in MBoro proposed to start with a kindergarten class and the rest would come later. Myriam agreed to be the “kindergarten teacher.” She had no training for this, but she adored children and had the experience of having raised the children of a French family and they considered her as their mother. Myriam always had a good sense of repartee; that’s how she won people’s hearts. She also had an extraordinary memory. Several years after the children left for the upper classes, she could accurately tell their date of birth and what they had done in kindergarten. At the request of the French families, she also agreed to give English and catechism lessons to the teenagers of expatriates who worked as engineers in the mine; Myriam also knew how to win them over!
In September1986, Myriam returned to France to take up her mission again in Toulon as a catechist and doing some pastoral work in the parish. In 1990, she was missioned to Canada to take up a ministry in Garritty House, Regina, where children and young adults with special needs were cared for. By 1998, Myriam was recalled to her home Province and became a regular volunteer at St Thomas’ Hospice in Barry, South Wales. The love of the French language and culture never left Myriam so in 2004, she moved to New Southgate, London, where she ministered to the French community in Notre Dame de France, in Leicester Square, with the French Marist Fathers where she delighted in making new friends. Even today, many still ask after her.
After several years of devoted activity, Myriam felt that her health was failing and so asked to join the Euphrasie Barbier Community to be given the care she now needed. She moved from there to St Anne’s in 2014, when it became evident that the state of her health was giving cause for concern and she would be able to receive twenty four hour care there. In her final years she suffered immensely until the Lord called her home on August 30th 2021.
Fr Damien Diouf, a Marist from Notre Dame de France, one of Myriam’s former students when he was a novice in Senegal, came to celebrate her life on September 23rd in St Anne’s Chapel. He spoke warmly of her early years in Senegal and as a mother among his own people. He quietly and respectfully spoke to her in his mother tongue, Wolof, a language known so well by Myriam, before she was carried to her final resting place.
The final words are from the sisters in France who wrote: “Without exaggerating, Sister Myriam was a great missionary who won hearts by her simplicity, her closeness to everyone, Christians and Muslims. May God welcome her into his joy and peace!
Que Dieu I’accueille dans sa joie et sa paix!