Global Sisters Report: Q&A with journalist and filmmaker Dearbhail McDonald
BY KIMBERLEY HEATHERINGTON 12 March 2024
Ireland’s nuns are vanishing.
Once boasting a peak number of 13,400 members — in the 1960s — Irish female religious orders today count fewer than 4,000 women,
with an average age exceeding 80
Documenting their history and cultural impact is both a matter of dwindling opportunity and still-raw sensitivities, as Ireland grapples with the spiritual damage from decades of abuse scandals. They include the hideous tragedies of the sister-run
and
now the subject of confidential negotiations between the government and religious orders brokering an
$875 million survivor compensation package
It was in this charged communal context that award-winning Irish author, journalist and broadcaster Dearbhail McDonald — who honed her craft reporting on seemingly scandal after scandal in the church — undertook the television project that became
The documentary — and a companion piece, “The Last Priests in Ireland” — aired on Irish state broadcaster RTÉ in January.
Trained as both a lawyer (Trinity College Dublin) and journalist (Dublin City University), McDonald — still a self-described “St. Clare’s girl,” referencing her convent school education — admits she struggled “to reconcile the undoubted achievements of our women in religious orders with the undeniable legacy of abuse.”
“The Last Nuns in Ireland” is, then, both a personal and public attempt to make some kind of peace with a complicated spiritual and cultural legacy.
Global Sisters Report: Could you tell us about the inspiration for this project? As Ireland rapidly secularizes and religious orders dwindle in numbers, did you feel an urgency to document the lives of these women now?
McDonald: The starting point of this project was a pitch by Scratch Films to RTÉ to undertake an archiving project to record elderly priests’ and nuns’ life stories before they are lost.
Link to full interview: