AS IT WAS
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Kathleen Morris Fitzmaurice

Religious name:

Sister M. Honorius

date of birth:

April 10, 1913

first profession:

July 9, 1932

date of death:

February 18, 1996.
   


Sister Mary Honorius Fitzmaurice, christened Kathleen Morris, belonged to a remarkable family.

She was the second eldest daughter of Myles Fitzmaurice from County Wexford, Ireland, and Elizabeth Rankin, born in Strone in Argyllshire, Scotland.

Her two sisters, Margaret and Eileen, became Marist Sisters, Sister David and Sister Romanus, and filled the offices of Mistress of Novices and Superior General, respectively. Her mother, when she was widowed, joined the same congregation and became Mother de Chantelle. (This unusual religious family is pictured, left, in 1942.)

Kathleen was born on April 10, 1913, in a Moorish castle on Gibraltar.

Her father was a devout Catholic and a Major in the British Army. Her mother was a devout Presbyterian and when she married was cut off from her family.

When Kathleen was three years old, the Fitzmaurice family, a boy and the three girls, returned to Scotland on a troop ship and took up residence in their mother’s village of Strone.

Kathleen started school at the small public school in Strone. About three years later, the family moved across the Clyde River and the children were enrolled in the Catholic school at Gourlock. There, Kathleen made her first Holy Communion and was confirmed. Her mother had already been received into the Catholic Church.

Later her father was put in charge of the military fort at Dunoon where troops were sent to be trained. When Kathleen was 11 years old, they moved to Portsmouth in England.

When the depression struck, the British Army no longer wanted ex-military officers and her father lost his job. In 1927 family came to Australia and settled in Balmain.

Kathleen, now 14 years old and unwilling to return to school, found a job at Mark Foy’s in the shoe department.

In Balmain she came in contact with the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, especially Sister Mary Malachy O’Connell. She went to St Scholastica’s and arranged with Mother Basil Carden to enter the Novitiate at Pennant Hills on September 7, 1929.

She was professed as Sister Mary Honorius on July 9, 1932, and completed her teacher training at St Scholastica’s Training College.

Alan Hunt, the writer of this article, met Sister Honorius in her latter years, when she was living at Polding Villa, Glebe Point:

I was invited to an Open Day at the Archives of the Sisters of Charity, at St Vincent’s, Potts Point. I arranged to take Sister Juliana Scott SGS, and as a companion, Sister Honorius.

While driving past the old Mark Foys store in Elizabeth Street on the way to Potts Point, Sister Honorius remarked that when she entered the Novitiate in 1929 the staff at Mark Foys gave her a silver pocket watch and two pairs of black shoes.

As quick as a flash Sister Juliana said that no wonder they went broke giving away such a generous gifts. This caused great laughter in the car and was the beginning of a very happy afternoon at St Vincent’s, Potts Point.

Her next appointment was to the secondary school at St Christopher’s at Manuka, ACT.

In the years following, she taught at Nowra, Moruya, Lawson, Charters Towers, Wilston and Coffs Harbour and she was principal at Lawson, Queanbeyan and Warriewood. From 1978-1983, she was careers adviser at St Patrick’s College, Campbeltown, and she also fulfilled the duties of provincial bursar during that time.

She retired to Canberra in 1984 but in September 1985 moved to Polding Villa because of continued ill health. There she spent almost 10 years, always a vital force in the community until only months before her death, when her energies seemed spent.  The loss of all members of her immediate family turned her thoughts towards joining them.

In May 1995, she moved to the Sacred Heart Hospice at Darlinghurst but her health improved and she was transferred to Bethany Nursing Home at Eastwood.

She died peacefully in her sleep on February 18, 1996, aged 82 and in the 67th year of her religious life.

photo credit: used with the kind permission of the Marist Sisters

by Alan Hunt and Jill Forrester who are both Good Samaritan Oblates.