AN APPEAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 443, 7 October 1881, Page 23

AN APPEAL.

We have received the following from the Lady Superior of the Convent of Poor Clares, Ballyjamesduff, county Cavan, Ireland :—: — v Will you for love of the Most Sacred Heart of our Lord assist a poor young Community of the Children of St. Francis and St. Clare in the arduous undertaking of building a new convent and free schools ? In return you shall have our daily prayers, with those of our young charges. " For ten years in a small temporary convent we have borne in silence many hardships, and would to the end, but the failing health of our Sisters, the wretched state of our schools, force us to make known our position to you, feeling confident with your usual charity and generosity, of which we have heard, you will come to our relief. " Nuns bound by vow of strict enclosure, never even looking beyond the convent limits, oar only recreation ground is a small garden but a few square yards in extent. Within doors the space is even more circumscribed ; we have not the most necessary accommodation, and this is among the least of our disadvantages. Every year we are threatened with destruction by continual floods ; for several weeks this season the ground floor of our little convent was five feet under water, and during that time the alarm of the Sisters was truly pitiable, fearing the foundations would give way and bury us in the ruins. These floods always leave behind the germs of disease, and, in the words our medical attendant, the imperfect accommodation and unhealthy position of our present house is impairing the health, shortening the lives, and rendering our Sisters every way unsuited for the great work of our holy Institute. We have no chapel, our Lord k in the Most Holy Sacrament reposes in a small Tabernacle in a room we have fitted up as well as our circumstances would admit, and here, with not even standing space, a large portion of the people must assemble for Mass on Sundays. It is with extreme reluctance we make our great necessity known, but the condition of our schools, and the thought of our poor children more than any other motive has forced us to appeal to our charitable friends. We have a daily attendance of nearly 200 children ; we have not sufficient accommodation for 80, and if the convent is sometimes endangered from floods, it is the wonder of strangers that parents trust their children to a school-house in such a tottering condition, indeed, when a storm rises during school hours people come asking us to dismiss the pupils lest the old walls should fall. We derive no temporal advantage from the schools ; we devote our lives to the gratuitous care and instruction of poor female children, especially orphans. The more destitute we feed and clothe. " For our work of building we must rely entirely on the charity of the faithful. J * " The building is begun, kindly aid us to continue it by giving erer so small an alms for leve of our Lord and St. Francis."