Carmel Gallagher

Reflecting on the demise of traditional Catholicism in Ireland almost a decade ago, theologian Fr Vincent Twomey expressed the view that the greatest achievement of the Catholic Church is perhaps its missionary tradition.¹ Twomey pointed out that Irish missionaries built up societies in every continent through their involvement in education and healthcare. While the contribution of missionaries has been acknowledged from time to time by politicians, the media, and academia, the work of missionaries has been largely tangential to discourse on religion and ethics in Ireland. This contrasts with the extent to which missionaries have had civic honours bestowed on them internationally for their extraordinary impact in particular areas of human welfare or education.² In Ireland their legacy is regarded as more of a cultural and historical phenomenon than as an important reservoir of Catholic faith in action and of Christian wisdom. There are fewer than 700 Catholic missionary nuns and priests serving overseas today³ in contrast to a highpoint in 1965 when Ireland had 7,085 Catholic missionaries, primarily nuns and priests, working overseas.⁴ Irish missionaries are now a cultural anomaly in a post-Catholic society characterised by extra-institutional religion, secularisation and a postcolonial global order. Do their lives only make sense as a specific socio-historical instance of ‘the missionary movement’?⁵ What can we still learn from what they did, how they did it, and what they hoped to achieve in going overseas to serve as Catholic missionaries?

Irish missionaries have worked across cultures in over ninety countries, mainly in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and South and Central America,⁶ striving to serve the poorest and most marginalised communities as a lifetime commitment and in a variety of roles and settings. Journalist Joe Humphreys’ informative and engaging book on Irish missionaries whom he visited across the globe praised their strong practical emphasis, courage, and single-mindedness as they engaged in outreach work with marginalised groups and spearheaded campaigns for social justice, often at considerable danger to themselves.⁷ The contribution of missionaries to global work on social justice and development aid can be traced. For example, the work of Concern Worldwide, Trocaire and Ireland’s development aid programme⁸ have all been shaped directly or indirectly by missionaries. The UCC academic Denis Linehan has highlighted the influence of Irish missionaries on the relative strength of Ireland’s ‘soft power’ in international relations through the valuable social networks they created in the Global South and in their work for social justice.⁹

Yet, it is questionable whether the work of our missionaries, including their deep insights into human problems and dilemmas and their way of serving the Church and being Christian, has been seen as a resource or inspiration in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Their collective experience of lived faith does not seem to have impacted religious practice or the Christian imagination as one might have expected. Neither do their contributions seem widely known or valued in Irish society, and there appears to have been a disconnect between the work of missionaries and discourse on values.

These questions inspired my late NUIG colleague sociologist Dr Ricca Edmondson and me to embark on a sociological research study to tell the stories of thirty-seven Irish Catholic missionary nuns and priests who had returned to live in Ireland after, in many cases, a lifetime of overseas service as missionaries and to explore the meaning of their missionary lives.¹⁰

This article will present some findings on the life stories of this overlooked group, whose lives are both ordinary and extraordinary. The life stories, experiences, and reflections of the missionaries offer perspectives on living ethically as a human being, a Catholic, and a Christian in contemporary Ireland. Contextual theology informed by Vatican II, liberation theology, small Christian communities, and the social sciences provided important frames of reference. Four themes have been selected from the findings: the intercultural and interreligious experiences of the missionaries, the holistic missionary methods they used, their strong learning orientation, and living with dissonance. Arising from these themes, the article will reflect briefly on what, if any, impact the missionaries have had on the Catholic Church in contemporary Ireland.

The study

The missionaries were recruited by invitation circulated through the Association of Leaders of Missionaries & Religious of Ireland (AMRI) to member organisations, seeking participants on a voluntary basis.¹¹ Thirty-seven returned missionaries were interviewed for the study, twenty women and seventeen men representing twenty different religious orders.¹² The longest period served as an overseas missionary was fifty-eight years and most of the participants had spent at least twenty years overseas.

The participants were facilitated in telling the stories of their lives and work through narrative interviews and inductive analysis. The methods adopted in the study were designed to explore how the missionaries constructed their life courses within the possibilities and constraints facing them and to understand the meaning of their missionary experiences. The guided conversational interviews, which prompted reflective analysis, ranged widely over their lives and work.

The life-course perspective adopted in the study sought to capture the intertwined and multilayered experiences of the missionaries, the social contexts they inhabited over their lifetime, and their sense of who they are.¹³ Key features of the life course of the cohort of missionaries who were born in Ireland between the 1930s and the 1960s – the subjects of the study – include an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church; a politically conservative, institutionalized, and largely rural society; widespread emigration; and a gradual opening up of a more pluralist, liberal society from the late 1960s.

The study explored how the missionaries had navigated life course changes in the context of an evolving Church, rapidly changing societies, and intercultural missionary experiences. They were asked to speak about their lives before they went abroad, right back to their childhood and communities of origin, their lives as missionaries, and their lives since they returned to Ireland. There was a particular focus on the how of missionary work and the missionaries’ sense of themselves.

Intercultural and interreligious experiences

Interculturality shaped the worldview and identities of the missionaries, and missionaries were committed to fostering intercultural understanding. The idea of not having all the answers and learning from the people and culture while giving the ‘Good News’ of the Gospels was a common theme addressed by the missionaries. Some missionaries received good intercultural training prior to their placements abroad. However, experiences of pre-departure intercultural training varied depending on the period in question and the resources that orders devoted to language and cultural learning.

Maurice, who worked in South-East Asia, summed up a common view of the missionary project among the missionaries interviewed:

So, we all went out thinking that we were bringing the joy of the Gospel. The truth is, God was there long before we were there. God was with the people. … We went and we brought energy, but we are energised … we’re blessed in many ways.

While some of the older missionaries experienced a service-station model of Church¹⁴ in their early years as a missionary, the meaning of evangelisation evolved after Vatican II to focus on how ordinary people could be empowered to live out the gospel message in community.

A hallmark of the missionary was living closely with people from different cultures, generally for lengthy periods of time, and being committed to improving people’s lives in the light of Christian gospel values. Anne said,

As a missionary you try to show a compassion that’s embracing, a compassion of caring, listening, respecting. … as a missionary… you go to a people to stay with the people, to help the people but… if difficulties arise in an area… missionaries never thought about going home.

She also noted that all the money they received went to the people, and missionaries would usually learn the language. She also stressed that NGOs do their work in a compassionate way too, and she had great respect for Trocaire.

Interculturality facilitated greater tolerance. Anne believed she was a better person for having been a missionary; she said her experiences ‘sandpapered off some of my edges’, while Monica reflected that she has developed ‘a bigger perspective on things’ without changing her values. However, participants acknowledged there could be cultural tension points and complexities in relation to being culturally respectful while upholding human rights. Great skill and sensitivity had to be exercised, especially in countries where Catholicism was a minority religion. Women missionaries working in healthcare encountered cultural dilemmas around women’s reproductive health in countries where patriarchal attitudes prevailed and had to find ways to ensure the best outcomes for women.

While there were only a few examples of the missionaries working together with other Christian missionaries, many missionaries understood the complexities of interfaith dialogue and appreciated the intricacies of the interrelationships of religion, politics, and interculturality. Some sought out opportunities to work with people of other faiths. Working in South-East Asia, Cathal stated, ‘Part of my best years were in dialogue with people of Islamic faith.’

Missionaries developed genuine cross-cultural friendships in their host countries, and as missionary orders themselves became more international the relational aspect of interculturality became a daily reality in their own religious communities. This was noted by missionaries as essentially a process of letting go for them, one in which they discarded long-held ideas of the superiority of their own culture and religion and opened themselves up to a process of inculturation that enriched their lives in ways they did not expect or anticipate.

A holistic missionary method

A holistic approach to human and spiritual development characterised the work of the missionaries. Particularly in Latin America under the influences of liberation theology¹⁵ and integral mission,¹⁶ mission became more focused on linking faith and social action.

This holistic approach was evident across the work of the missionaries, who taught and trained people to live in Christian solidarity with others: for example, bible study groups linked to collective action to secure rights for small farmers and low-paid workers, or small Christian communities empowering people to help develop community-based health services in areas of extreme need.

Empowering people to improve their own lives requires community education and developing local leadership. Small Christian communities¹⁷ (also known as base ecclesial communities) were seen as the most basic and organic grouping at grassroots level representing a new way of being Church with the emphasis on making connections between life and faith. Introducing people to the Gospels and empowering them to act with justice and kindness were inseparable: ‘Well, it’s about making that connection between Christianity, the living of Christian life, and the development of the community around you’ (Jude, missionary in Africa).

Martha referenced the words of Jesus in the Bible – ‘I have come that you may have life and have it to the full’ (Jn 10:10) – when she explained the missionary aims behind a health and development programme for women and children in Brazil. This programme, developed in the 1980s by a female paediatrician and several bishops, trained community leaders, mainly women, who would visit families, identify needs, and help to transform lives through interventions on health, nutrition, education, and citizenship. While Martha explained that ‘all Churches and none’ were involved in running the programme, the leaders understood their work in terms of applying the transformative Gospel of Jesus Christ. For Martha, this practical programme was more than social work and represented a Christian way of living.

The missionaries did not make a distinction between justice concerns and evangelization, echoing a view of Redemptorist priest Fr Gerry O’Connor¹⁸ that both approaches are valid: ‘You will get people who have a wonderfully articulate voice on human rights but will never have spent much time with someone in pain, or who is anguished.’ Mission work was justice oriented and community oriented and required full personal commitment. Church and community were intertwined in the approaches of the missionaries through their work in accompaniment, community development, training, rights- based work, supports to refugees and migrants, and outreach to marginalised groups.

The missionaries’ sense of mission identity evolved in tandem with their work. Bernadette explicitly saw her life as a missionary as integrated and meaningful: ‘it was wholesome.  There was work and there was play and there was prayer and there was relaxation and  it was just a kind of a blended life.’ Speaking about the joy of seeing a woman oppressed by prostitution paint a beautiful picture, Bernadette said, ‘You celebrate the small victories and the small joys as well. That’s what kept me sane anyway.’

As the missionaries became more immersed in the concerns of local communities and were able to integrate the values of the Gospel more closely with the lives of the people, their sense of mission purpose grew.

Strong learning orientation

Learning was important throughout the lives of the missionaries; through study, reflection, and collective analysis in their orders, many of the partici- pants were facilitated to rethink, refocus, and review their missionary voca- tion. Because of the demanding work and unique personal sacrifice required, missionaries needed time out to recharge and ask very basic questions as to why they should continue to do mission work and where their energy and motivation came from.

Dedicated time off for study and renewal as well as regular chapter meetings to review the work of the order itself were essential navigational points in missionary life. Sabbaticals were key to renewal and learning. Relevant courses in areas like human and organisational development, social sciences, counselling, theology, and new approaches in pastoral work expanded the missionaries’ capabilities and gave them increased freedom over the direction of their work.

Andrew, a missionary in Africa, described a Master’s programme he undertook in pastoral theology in a European country in the second half of the 1970s, which led to him taking a completely different direction in his work:

That blew my mind … It did, I think, what … a post-degree time should do for anybody. The students that I was with were coming out of jails in Colombia, Uruguay, Chile … It was the years after Allende in Chile, so all these people had been hugely involved in the … community movement and liberation theology.

However, orders did not respond with equal openness to the new directions emerging, and many orders found the period after Vatican II very difficult as they tried to make sense of the changes. One missionary recalled the period of the 1970s as a ‘haze’ when her order ‘floundered’. She said it was several years after Vatican II when change came about in her order.

Many spoke about learning from wise leadership in the local Church and among lay people in the mission country. Lucy spoke about wise people she encountered who had ‘a broad vision’ and Malachy spoke about wise people he knew ‘not going for certainty’. Bernadette, a nurse who worked with women in prostitution, said they had a wonderful cardinal in her diocese in South America who supported them in all aspects of their work.

Living with dissonance

Paradox and ambiguity were inherent in missionary life, and missionaries reflected on how they had dealt with difficult questions and ambiguities in their missionary lives and in their institutions. These related to the role of women in the Church, the Church’s position on sexual morality, and the distressing issue of clerical sexual abuse. Adjusting to life after active missionary work overseas also presented challenges.

Some missionaries spoke about living with dissonance and being able to hold contradictory positions simultaneously. Participants spoke about how missionaries had to frequently ‘change gears’, and they demonstrated resourcefulness, persistence, and flexibility in finding ways around problems.

The teaching of Humanae Vitae¹⁹ was a potential difficulty for missionaries in their pastoral work with people who had HIV/AIDS. Missionaries explained that it was an advantage to be so far away from their headquarters where they had greater freedom to recommend safe sex practices, including use of condoms, which were officially disapproved of by the Catholic Church.

The missionaries who took part in the study described a process of gradual congruence between their missionary values, personality, work/ living arrangements, and the institutional requirements of their order and Church. Nonetheless, very few careers followed a linear or untroubled path, and the many who left religious life altogether must not have experienced coherence and integration in their missionary and religious lives.

Women in general experienced more restrictions in their ministry than men. Many gave examples of misogyny and old-fashioned thinking among priests and seminarians that prevented them, for example, from giving sermons or conducting religious retreats despite having relevant qualifications.

Impact of missionaries on the Catholic Church in Ireland

How did the missionaries’ experiences influence the Catholic Church in Ireland and people’s understandings of Christian living and serving their Church? Many of the missionaries experienced little interest in their work apart from family and friends and those fellow religious who had had over- seas missionary experiences. Journalist Rosita Boland, who interviewed a group of returned missionaries in 2019, noted that they relished the ‘opportunity to meet others like themselves, who are adjusting back into a society where they are now more or less invisible’.²⁰ Some returned missionary priests reported that they had found it difficult to introduce worthwhile ideas from their missionary experiences into parishes in Ireland. Malachy said that the Church in Ireland had ‘a way of doing things’, and he contrasted the approach of the Irish Church with the Church in Peru where they had ‘the freedom… to explore those alternatives… whereas here now, you really are limited … to one way… and if it’s not that way then… there’s a tension.’ He was disappointed to find no interest in his missionary work from successive bishops in his diocese in Ireland despite having been sponsored by the diocese.

Many of the missionaries, especially women, did not connect well with church structures on their return and often sought out ministries where they could be reasonably autonomous. The sense of powerlessness of many female returned missionaries was palpable despite their extensive missionary experiences. Several missionaries, women and men, had joined groups that were on the fringes of official church structures, for example, Association of Catholic Priests and We Are Church where they could dialogue with like- minded Catholics.

Even within Church circles, it was not clear if missionaries’ voices were listened to, and their experiences seemed to run parallel with, rather than intersecting with, the diocesan Church. The submissions from AMRI to the Irish synodal process²¹ give insights into the extent to which women religious and lay missionaries felt that their experiences and contributions were not valued. Women religious expressed a strong feeling of marginalisation in the Church – ‘a deep sense that we have been pruned “to non-existence” by the Irish Church.’ They spoke about women not being ‘bogged down with dogma’ and ‘often moving ahead in many social, environmental and justice issues’.²²

Co-responsibility, lay ministry, and recognition of women’s gifts and leadership are some of the themes selected as priorities for the next steps of the Irish synodal pathway.²³ Listening to the experiences of missionaries and learning from them should inform this process.

Conclusions

This article has highlighted the ways missionaries served based on their experiences and perspectives of working cross culturally with people at the margins of society, mainly in the Global South. Key qualities conveyed in their life stories include cultural sensitivity, a wholeness to their lives, a strong learning orientation, robust social justice focus, and theological openness. Their understanding of mission and their identity as missionaries evolved with new ideas from Vatican II, new social and political ideas, and innovative models of pastoral work, such as small Christian communities. There was a sense that the missionaries had updated their faith and continued to do so. Accompaniment and empowerment of marginalised groups was their missionary method underpinned by a deep commitment to gospel values.

While the missionary phenomenon of the twentieth century has passed, the work of Irish missionaries is testament to a way of living ethically and authentically as a Catholic Christian that has relevance for Ireland and the Catholic Church of the twenty-first century. Their way of serving the Church has been poorly understood by Catholics in Ireland and has had limited bearing on the diocesan Church. Hugh MacMahon, a returned missionary priest, reflecting on his own experiences in Korea, concluded that ‘the mind- broadening experiences of its missionaries overseas seemed to have had little impact on the Irish Church or society.’²⁴

Boland, writing about the group of missionaries whom she met in 2019, ventured the view that ‘their collective stories form a jigsaw of social history that will die out after this generation do.’²⁵

The experiences and perspectives of returned missionaries (as well as missionaries who continue to serve overseas and religious who engage in practical missionary work at home) are a reservoir of practical, courageous, and inspiring Christian living. Their stories can and should inform the current synodal process underway in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Dr Carmel Gallagher is an Emeritus Research Fellow at the School of Social Sciences, Law and Education, Technological University Dublin. This essay is based on her recent book Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2024).

Notes

1. ‘On the other hand, the greatest achievement of the Irish Church was its missionary tradition, which saw Irish Catholic missionaries leave everything to go to the ends of the earth, first in the seventh to twelfth centuries, and then in the nineteenth and twentieth, “to bring good news to the poor, heal the broken-hearted – and, incidentally, build up societies in every continent through their involvement in education and healthcare.”’ V. Twomey, ‘The End of Irish Catholicism? Fifteen Years On’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 106:421 (2017), pp. 39–48 (p. 42).
2. Examples include Sr Cyril Mooney, Loreto sister, for her work as an educational innovator in India; Fr Shay Cullen, Columban, for his work in the Philippines with sexually abused and trafficked children; and Sr Orla Treacy, Loreto sister, for her work to provide education for girls in South Sudan.
3. Personal communication from the Association of Leaders of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (AMRI), 2022.
4. E. M. Hogan, The Irish Missionary Movement: A Historical Survey, 1830–1980 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1990), p. 8.
5. The Irish missionary movement refers to a renewed awareness and commitment within the Catholic Church in Ireland in the early decades of the twentieth century to the evangelisation of peoples who were not Christian. The institutional source for the drive to evangelise overseas came from religious orders, both continental and indigenous, and while the missionary movement was supported by the Irish hierarchy, it remained largely separate from the diocesan Church. See Hogan, Irish Missionary Movement.
6. Moran, 2016: 1
7. J. Humphreys, God’s Entrepreneurs: How Irish Missionaries Tried to Change the World (Dublin: New Island, 2010).
8. Concern Worldwide, originally named Concern Africa, was established in 1968 by Irish missionaries from the Spiritan order along with lay people in Ireland to respond to imposed starvation in Biafra during the Nigerian civil war. It is now Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency. Trocaire is the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland founded in 1973. It runs an annual Lent fundraising campaign to raise awareness of global poverty. Ireland’s overseas aid progamme (Irish Aid) was established in 1974. It is directed to NGOs working on the ground in the Global South and in partnership with governments.
9. D. Linehan, ‘Common Ground: How Missionaries Shape Ireland’s Global Connections’, The Australian Outlook, August 2021, www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/common- ground-how-missionaries-shape-irelands-global-connections
10. C. Gallagher, Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024).
11. The research was granted ethical approval by NUI Galway Research Ethics Committee on 26 January 2021 (reference number: 2021.01.005). The key ethical principles that guided the research were informed consent, transparency, honesty, confidentiality, integrity, and respect for the participants. Pseudonyms were used throughout the study.
12. The sample included one lay missionary, one ex-cleric, and one diocesan priest who had worked as a missionary.
13. The concept of ‘linked lives’ was developed by Elder et al. (2003) and highlighted the extent to which an individual’s life is intimately shaped by the needs, circumstances, and choices of others. While missionaries were in a sense ‘cultural products’ of their time influenced by shared meanings of mission and Church, they also helped to co-create new shared meanings over their life courses.
14. A ‘service-station’ approach to missionary work was seen in Stephen’s account of working inIndia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He described a ‘limited theology’ pre-Vatican II where the focus was on the sacraments with enormous numbers of baptisms each day and Masses. He said, ‘There was very little sense of God and who God is … it was all legal and very little Scripture.’
15. Liberation theology emerged in South America in the 1970s and became a methodology of mission work that was adopted by the Catholic bishops and missionaries that synthesised an analysis of unjust political and economic systems with a strong Bible-based social spirituality through the medium of base ecclesial communities. See, for example, D. Dorr, ‘Liberation Theology Comes to Rome’, The Furrow, 65:12 (2014), pp. 616–621.
16. Integral mission espoused by Protestant Latin American theologians like Samuel Escobar – Changing Tides: Latin America & World Mission Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002) – and Rene Padilla – ‘Holistic Mission’, in J. Corrie (ed.), Dictionary of Mission Theology: Evangelical Foundations (Downer’s Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2007) – sought to link evangelisation and social transformation. They also worked to ensure far greater input from Asia, Africa and South America into theological reflection on mission.
17. J. G. Healey, Building the Church as Family of God: Evaluation of Small Christian Communities in Eastern Africa (Nairobi: AMECEA Gaba Publications-CUEA Press, 2012).
18. Interviewed by Joe Humphreys, God’s Entrepreneurs, p. 195.
19. Humanae Vitae was an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1968 that reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching rejecting the use of artificial contraception. It caused controversy and dissent among Catholics and has been largely ignored by many Catholics.
20. R. Boland, ‘The Returned Missionaries: ‘I’m More African than I Am Irish’, Irish Times, 12 January 2019.
21. AMRI, ‘Submission on Synodality’, www.amri.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AMRI- Submission-on-Synodality-May-2022.pdf
22. AMRI, ‘Experiences and Dreams as Religious Women in the Catholic Church’, www.amri.ie/ wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AMRI-Synod-Experiences-of-women-religious34.pdf
23. National Synodal Team, Baptised and Sent (Maynooth: Irish Episcopal Conference, 2025), https://synod.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Baptised-and-Sent-Preparatory-Document-for- the-Pre-Synodal-Assembly-Being-Held-in-Kilkenny-on-18th-October-2025.pdf
24. H. MacMahon, Guest from the West: Lessons for the West from a Lifetime in the East (Original Writing Ltd, 2015), pp. 193–194.
25. Boland, ‘Returned Missionaries’.