A Co Cavan nun who was also a midwife delivered Pope Francis as a baby at his family home in Argentina in 1936.
An expert in the world of Irish missionaries has made the discovery.
Matt Moran, who wrote The Legacy of Irish Missionaries Lives On, has traced the origins of the Cavan nun who helped Pope Francis in his earliest days to Crosserlough. Sr Oliva Maria, formerly Susan Cusack, trained as a nurse and midwife in Paris with the Little Sisters of the Assumption from 1909 onwards.
The order of the Little Sisters of the Assumption were founded in France in 1865. Susan Cusack, a daughter of a small farmer left Crosserlough aged 20 years of age to train, little did she know on December 17th 1936 she would deliver and care for a future pontiff, Pope Francis.
Mr Moran says that Sr Oliva Maria was born Susan Cusack on the 1st of January 1889 to Philip and Ellen Cusack (nee Donohue) in the parish of Crosserlough. She was one of four girls and two boys, who lived on a small farm. She was baptised in Crosserlough’s St Mary’s Church, and attended St Mary’s National School.
Sr Oliva returned home to Cavan at least once in 1963, she worked in different areas of Argentina, before spending her last years near Buenos Aires. She died aged 86 in October 1975. Mr Moran said there is two grandniece's of Sr Oliva living locally, one in Cootehill and one in Kilnaleck. Mr Moran who is a former chairman of Misean Cara, a charity which supports missionaries, was fascinated to discover her life-story.
Speaking on the Wider View programme earlier, Mr Moran outlined how he first became aware of a Cavan connection, “during the Papal Mass in 2018 there was broadcast on RTE and Fr Dermod McCarthy had been speaking about Pope Francis having studied English in Dublin.”
”Years previously, he made a reference to a Cavan nun who nursed him at birth or after birth, and that caught my attention, because two years previously, I had published a book on the legacy of Irish missionaries lives on. I write stories for a British online publication called Independent Catholic News on missionary type stories and I am always on the look out for an unique type of story.
Mr Moran now had to carry out of a lot of research to identify who is this Cavan nun was, but over a period of time, the puzzle came together. “I had been the chairman of Misean Cara which is a company made up of 89 religious congregations, and I knew the congregation, Little Sisters of the assumption, so I made contact with them. It didn't immediately strike a bell with them, because she was born Susan Cusack.
”They knew her sister Oliva Maria, and that caused the problem for a number of weeks as we worked through it, but eventually, anyways, the Holy Rosary sisters in Killeshandra were very helpful in identifying a nun from Ballinamore , who they figured was from the same area as Sr Oliva. I contacted Sr Anna Smith, who was very helpful and cooperative. They were essentially born on the same road. Well, she never knew her and only saw Susan once when she was home on a snowy morning outside Crosserlough Church. She didn't know much more about her, so that led me then to having a name and and a location and I went back to the congregation and they could give me some information about her parents, where she joined, where she was trained, and all of that so that allowed her to be identified.”
