Sr. Mary Cunningham, CCVI (1918-2016)

In 1925, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word established a convent in the “Isle of Missionaries” (Ireland), and Sister Florence Bryne and other recruiters from San Antonio visited schools promulgating that their “mission was to incarnate [make real] the Word, the healing love of Jesus – to spread it around – and that’s what they were doing now in Texas and other parts of the United States.”

When young Mary Cunningham heard those words, she told herself, “Wow, this is what I want to do!” Shortly after that, she joined the Sisters and came to San Antonio to finish high school. Sister Mary then majored in Education at Incarnate Word College and began what she thought would be her life work teaching in one of the Sisters’ many grade schools.

But it wasn’t long before she was sent to study for a graduate degree in Psychology, which she earned at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. That involved an internship in St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City next to the Bowery (a rough neighborhood) where she treated patients with alcoholism and drug addiction, an experience that would change her mission in life.

Sister Mary returned to the College to develop the Psychology Department and direct the Catherine Ryan Center, a school for children with learning challenges. After eight years, she returned to Ireland and worked with the Brothers of Charity for the mentally ill for a decade.

There, Sr. Mary served men and women whose difficult lives inspired her. They had “innumerable problems. But I was always impressed by their resilience and their courage. Despite all these obstacles, they keep on going. They keep on going. So, you don’t give up.”

Sr. Mary herself had been tested years before when she was asked to earn her graduate degree. She had some interest in Psychology, but she didn’t see herself pursuing a new career at that point in her life. She made it through the program only with the support of her fellow Incarnate Word Sisters. “They laughed with you, and they cried with you,” Sister Mary remembered. “They said, ‘keep going, don’t give up, Mary’ when it was hard, and when anything went well, they would congratulate you and say, ‘this is good’.”

And it all seemed worthwhile when some of her Psychology students went on to become professionals in the field: “I had the first five majors, and of those five, two went on to get their doctorate, and three went on to get master’s, and all five of them worked in service organizations. Tremendous!”

Eventually, Sister Mary chose another way to serve people with drug dependency; she joined others in the San Antonio Patrician Movement, a rehabilitation center that had been founded by Father Dermot Noel Brosnan, and she worked there for almost three decades. She found that ministry the most fulfilling.

Periodically, she heard from some of the patients: “I think [my work] is going to continue in the lives of the people that went there. [Some are] now they are counselors…and they are working in a drug treatment center. I had a [conversation] the other day with a young man in Austin, and he told me that he went on to get his Master’s, and he got his license as a counselor, and he’s working in that treatment center now.”

For Sr. Mary, that experience mirrors the Mission of the Incarnate Word Sisters across their various ministries: “I am sure that is the way [our] work goes on, I guess. It goes on at the University too, when the sisters are all gone, right? Or when the hospital, all the sisters are gone too. It will have to continue in the lives of people, a new generation. Maybe they’ll be better off. They’ll do better than we did.”

Sister Mary described extending the mission of service through staff development in the Patrician Movement: