Sister Mary Ursula Slattery

Ursula Mary Slattery was born at Thornbury on 16 August 1917, the youngest of seven children born to John and Ellen (Timothée) Slattery. Ursula wrote with affection of her birthplace, Thornbury, which also became the place of her last home on earth. It was in Thornbury that she began her education at St Mary’s Primary School, recalling vividly “the utter desolation” on her first day, of seeing her mother having to turn and leave her alone. Her secondary education was completed at Santa Maria College, Caroline Street, South Yarra, (1931–32) and at St Brigid’s Commercial Class (1933). It was in the atmosphere of her family that her love for Art and Music was born, a love that only continued to grow through her life.

After some years employed as a typist in the Motor Registration Office of the Premier’s Department, Ursula sought admission to the Novitiate of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan which she joined on 2 July 1940. She made her first profession of vows on 4 January 1943. In this, she followed her two sisters, Marie (Sister M Clare) and Veronica (Sister M Thecla) who had already been professed as Good Samaritan Sisters at this time, for 18 years and 14 years respectively.
Ursula spent almost 30 years teaching in secondary schools at St Brigid’s Marrickville, St Christopher’s Canberra, Santa Maria Northcote, and St Monica’s Epping. In 1976 she accepted the role of Provincial Secretary which she carried out with great generosity over a period of six years. Ursula then spent a further six years in part-time teaching before what she described as a “winding-down period” that, among other things, gave her the leisure to devote to another long-time love – the garden. It also allowed more time to spend with her sisters, Sister M Thecla and Kath, both resident in latter years at Marian House, Northcote.

Ursula drew great inspiration from attending a “Benedictine Experience” led by Esther de Waal, whose book, Living with Contradiction, also made her more ready “to accept my own limitations, and abilities and those of others, and thank God for them”. Conscious of one of those limitations, her deafness, she urged another sister to get the best possible help for a hearing problem, as Ursula herself did, but with little positive results. “It is,” she would write, “such a tiresome and isolating disability.”

A strong and forthright person by nature, she approached her hospitalisation for major surgery just one week ago with the same attitude. But two operations in three days made too great a demand on her physical strength, and she died in St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Melbourne on 30 August 2004.