19/08/2024
Delighted to have worked with Sr Magdalena and the sisters on creating a beautiful new home for the nuns!
The opening of a new monastery at Kylemore Abbey, one of the foremost visitor attractions in Connemara, has been hailed by Archbishop Francis Duffy as a “very rare event in Ireland and perhaps in western Europe”.
At the official blessing ceremony for the new €10m purpose-built home for the community of 15 Benedictine nuns, Dr Duffy said it was “an unusual event in contemporary Ireland” where for many years people have been accustomed to reading about convents and monasteries closing.
“Don’t let the significance of this most historic moment pass you by,” he told the assembled religious and civic leaders, family and friends, who gathered for the “hope-filled” occasion.
The opening of the new monastery comes over 350 years after the foundation of this Benedictine community in 1665 in the Belgium town of Ypres, where the nuns were known as “the Irish Dames”.
During World War I, the bombing of Ypres forced the nuns to flee their monastery and in 1920, they settled in Connemara in the iconic 19th-century lakeside castle built for a wealthy English physician, Mitchel Henry.
The new structure, designed by Co Mayo architect Michael Horan, marks a new start in familiar surroundings that blend peace, beauty and enterprise in a breath-taking landscape.
📸: Ray Ryan
