5. Nano Nagle

A light for my feet, a light on my Path Psalm 119:105

“While serving an apprenticeship as a merchant in Waterford City, this role reflects wealth and prosperity. As a successful businessman, he is challenged by the façade as he notices so many people are in need, crowded together in hovels in narrow streets and dark alleyways. Edmund is greatly inspired by learning of the work of Nano Nagle, who courageously founded the first Irish Religious Order, the Presentation sisters in 1755.”

Nano Nagle inspires Edmund to use his time, energy and substantial fortune to provide schools for the unschooled, aid for those in debt, spiritual comfort for the desolate, and love for the unloved. Both Nano and Edmund attract others who are inspired by them, like-minded people who want to share their vision. Today this continues through a wonderful network of lay and religious followers of both Nano Nagle and Edmund Rice Ministries.

Nano Nagle, foundress of the Presentation Sisters, makes her way through the back streets. The lantern she carries became for the poor of Cork a symbol of God’s love touching and helping the realities of their hard lives. Nano and Edmund might almost be described as spiritual twins: what she accomplished for the poverty-stricken young girls of Cork, he accomplished for the poverty-stricken young boys of Waterford. She sold everything to give to the poor, and so did he. Holy and heroic they both were, and when Edmund established his Congregation, the rule laid down by Nano for her Order was originally followed by the Brothers.