Eileen O’Connor’s Day: Remembering an Australian Saint-in-Waiting
- Kate Clinch
- Feb 4
- 3 min read
Eileen O’Connor was only twenty-eight years old when she died, ravaged by the tuberculosis that had converted bones in her spine to pus-filled abscesses, struggling for breath as her heart finally failed on the 10th of January, 1921. Even when she was alive, she was revered as a saint by many who knew her, who stored up memories and mementos of her, knowing her terrible illness would snatch her from them too soon. When she was well enough, she was carried out to sit on the grass at one of the many picnics held in the grounds of Our Lady’s Home for the Poor, for fundraising or to feed and uplift the hungry children of the sick poor. Once she had retired back to her bed, people would dig up the ground she had sat on, to treasure as a relic. Thinking about that gives me chills.
And now, over a century later, people in her local community continue to keep her memory alive. An annual Mass and morning tea are held in her honour at nearby St Brigid’s Church, after which her chapel and the new Eileen O’Connor Centre are opened to the public.
Of course, the landscape has changed since 1921. Eileen’s house, the original home of the Brown Nurses and home to Eileen from 1913 until her death is still there, with a view of the church spire and beyond that, the ocean. The current St Brigid’s Church was completed not long after her death, but the church she used to attend when she was well enough to be carried there was in the same grounds, and her nurses, later nuns, would through her gardens and down the hill to the church. Over time, Eileen’s gardens became smaller, and houses and apartments infilled the space, but there is a ‘secret’ narrow walkway that slips between building almost opposite the church, unofficially nicknamed ‘The Nun’s Walk’ that offers a little shade and nostalgia to those who want to avoid the heat on their walk to Eileen’s house after the service.
Up at the house, the devoted and curious enjoy the opportunity to reflect in the chapel that occupies Eileen’s former bedroom, taking turns kneeling to pray at her tomb, which is opened for the day, bedecked in blue satin and revealing her coffin under the floor. Eileen was initially buried in Randwick Cemetery, near where many of her sisters and Fr Ted McGrath rest now. She had always planned to return here and was finally reinterred here fifteen years after her death. Her body was found to be incorrupt (perfectly preserved).
The adjacent Eileen O’Connor Centre is an immersive museum, showcasing the remarkable contribution Eileen, her co-founder Fr McGrath, and the Brown Nurses have made not just to local sick poor, but to the history of nursing in Australia. And, through a century of change, that legacy continues. The Brown Nurses, no longer nuns, but still committed to compassionate service of the destitute and marginalised in inner Sydney, is one of the oldest continually-running not-for-profit community nursing organisations in Australia.
The way Eileen’s Day is celebrated has changed over time, too. The final chapter of Every Inch a Saint: a Novel about Eileen O’Connor, Australia’s Second Saint-in-Waiting is set in 2020 at the ninety-ninth anniversary of her death. Back then, the service was held in the old meeting room at Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor (the new museum is on that footprint now). Two hundred people overflowed the space and spilled out onto an adjacent patio. The late Sr Margaret Mary Birgan offered the communion wafers, just as she did in the novel. Sr Greta Gabb, who was so generous in helping me with the factual background of my story was there too. Covid then locked us down, but with Eileen’s centenary happening in 2021 and the advancement of her Cause for sainthood, the service has now moved to the larger space in the church down the hill.
Every Inch a Saint will be published in print and on Kindle on April 7th, and is available for pre-order on Amazon.
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