Two Sisters of St Joseph featured on the King’s Birthday Honours List this month, with Sr Carmel Moore RSJ and Sr Mary Ryan RSJ each receiving a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for their service to the Catholic Church.
Sr Carmel Moore RSJ OAM (Catholic Weekly/Supplied)
The Catholic Weekly reports that former schoolteacher, principal and congregational leader Sr Carmel Moore RSJ, 90, who joined the Sisters of St Joseph (Lochinvar) in 1955, was honoured for her longstanding contribution to the church, particularly through the Living Waters Meditation Centre, which she founded in Newcastle in 1997.
Speaking to the Newcastle Herald, she said the centre was her “life’s main work.”
“I had a need within myself to find silence and inner peace, it was something I craved, even from when I was young,” she said.
Approximately 800 people have attended the meditation centre in the nearly 30 years since it was established, with up to 50 attending the retreat mornings.
“There are many people who come along because the world’s just too fast for them, their lifestyle is too heavy for them,” she said.
And in Adelaide, Sr Mary Ryan RSJ, a Josephite sister who has dedicated much of her life to ensuring the legacy of St Mary MacKillop continues, was also awarded an OAM, reports The Southern Cross.
Sr Mary successfully steered the Mary MacKillop Precinct and Museum at Kensington through a major redevelopment including the opening of a state-of-the art interpretive museum in 2019 and has held leadership roles in across Australia over the 53 years since she was professed.
Sr Mary Ryan RSJ OAM (Southern Cross)
She is now the Assistant Director of the Mary MacKillop Spirituality Ministry in Kensington, Adelaide.
The award came out of the blue, she said.
“I received an email on a Sunday afternoon two and a half months ago,” she said.
It was a something of a “weird” email and she thought it might have been a spam or a hoax. Another look showed the Gov.au address to be official. The letter asked if she would like to be considered for an award and she was given a week to reply.
“I agonised over whether to accept,” she said given that there are many Sisters of St Joseph but, eventually, decided to accept on the understanding that the OAM was “for all of us”. “It is our reward,” she said.
Confirmation arrived just 10 days before the King’s Birthday public holiday and she will receive the award from the Governor General at a ceremony likely to be in September.
Whoever nominated her remains unknown, but she views the award as recognition of all of her 53 years work and not merely the 13 years since she became involved with the Mary MacKillop Precinct.
The congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph was founded by Saint Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods in 1866. Its founding members were women who worked in a simple, ordinary way to bring communities a message of human dignity and Christ’s saving love.
This article was drawn from an article on a range of Catholics who received King’s Birthday Honours, by Tara Kennedy, published in The Catholic Weekly.