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The handing over of keys to a new house is a very symbolic moment for home owners. Keys signify ownership and access but also new opportunities and hopes for the future.
The opening of the house at 64A Baggot Street in September 1827 was such an occasion. Imagine the excitement of Anna Maria Doyle and Catherine Byrn as they stood on the steps of Catherine McAuley’s Baggot Street home and slid the key into the front door lock for the first time.
This door would open for the next 200 years to vulnerable women, girls seeking education and opportunity, those needing food and shelter, women wanting to join a religious order dedicated to helping those made poor and in more recent years pilgrims and people of mercy from across the world.
Catherine, like many of the founders of her day, knew that education brought opportunity and hope, and the schoolrooms of Baggot Street would provide this opportunity for poor girls who had been denied schooling- she stated that … no work of charity can be more productive of good to society than the careful instruction of women.
Catherine also believed that … the poor need help today not next week … and the door to the House of Mercy remained open with welcome, hospitality and mercy.
The House of Mercy has provided keys to a different life, a kinder life, a well of opportunity, a blessing of compassion and mercy to hundreds of thousands of people.
Our challenge is to keep these doors of blessing and compassion open across the Mercy world - to look for ways to inspire hope, to encourage others and to walk beside those who struggle. Catherine inspires us to turn our gifts and our effort into keys of Mercy.
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You can see the original keys of 64A Lower Baggot Street in the Heritage Centre at Mercy International Centre in Dublin (see pic above).
Caroline Thompson, Head of Heritage and Spirituality