Cornelius Lynch and Sr Mary Crowley OLA
That Their Good Deeds May Not Be Forgotten, launched recently in Macroom, is a remarkable gathering of stories from Clondrohid, Kilnamartyra and Macroom, three parishes whose sons and daughters went on to serve across the world in 42 different Religious congregations. Written by Cornelius Lynch, the book brings together the lives of 205 individuals whose combined years of ministry exceed ten thousand. The scale alone is striking, but the real strength of the book lies in the careful way each life is honoured through the work they undertook and the people they served.
Drawing on historical records, community memory and personal accounts, the author traces a vast geographical spread. The women and men in these pages served in India, China, Burma, Ceylon, Samoa, Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Korea, Peru, Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, The Gambia, Tanzania, Nigeria, France, England, Ireland, Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Thailand, and across several states in the U.S. This breadth reflects the far-reaching influence of three small Irish parishes whose young people carried their formation into very different cultural, social and political contexts.
The work they undertook varied widely. Many taught in primary or secondary schools, often in overcrowded classrooms with few resources. Others nursed in hospitals and clinics, staffed mission stations, served in parish pastoral work, or built and managed homes for children, the elderly and those on the margins. The book highlights the stories of those who lived among the poor, the abandoned and the displaced, sharing daily life with communities experiencing deep hardship. These accounts emphasise presence more than achievement: the slow, consistent work that underpins education, healthcare, pastoral accompaniment and community-building, and the deep vocational commitments that shape Religious life from day to day.
For us, the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, the book carries particular resonance. Among its profiles is Sr Mary Crowley, OLA, our current District Leader, whose life tells its own story of fidelity and quiet commitment. Born in Rahoona, Ballymakeera, she grew up in a family where faith was present in the ordinary movement of the day. Influenced by childhood readings of mission magazines and inspired by her mother’s devotion to St Martin de Porres, she discerned her vocation during a retreat with an SMA priest in 1978. She entered the OLA that same year and made her first profession in 1981.
Her ministry unfolded across several regions of Nigeria. She began in Lagos, teaching in a primary school in the heart of a city of more than ten million people. Her reflections on this period highlight both the vibrancy and the challenges of urban life: the open markets, the pressure families faced, and the resilience of children determined to learn despite limited resources. After a period of ill health forced her return to Ireland, she resumed ministry in Ijebu-Ode in 1988, teaching in a Government Secondary School where large classes demanded creativity, patience and stamina. From there she was sent to Kaduna, where she oversaw a primary school with over two thousand pupils — Christian and Muslim children learning side by side during years marked at times by tension and unrest.
In 1995, after formation training in Dublin, she returned to Nigeria to accompany young women discerning religious life, first in Agbor, Delta State, and later in Ibadan, supporting young sisters preparing for final profession. These years required long journeys between convents, attentive listening, and an openness to the different ways young women understood and expressed their vocation.
Her administrative and pastoral responsibilities continued to expand. In 2001 she became the administrator of Maryland Comprehensive School in Lagos, originally founded by the OLA Sisters in 1969. At that time the school faced declining standards after years of state management. She oversaw substantial renovations and the appointment of sixty new teachers, working to restore a learning environment that supported the intellectual, emotional and spiritual development of its two thousand pupils.
From 2003 to 2013, Sr Mary served as Provincial of the Irish Province, a role that carried responsibility for the care of sisters in Ireland and pastoral support for Irish OLA sisters missioned in Algeria, Argentina, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. She now serves another term of leadership, as our District Leader.
In the years before returning to this responsibility, she taught English to asylum seekers and migrants from Syria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia and Eastern Europe. That time remains a quiet influence in how she sees the world: the resilience of people arriving with complicated histories, the weight they carry, and the tenderness required to help someone find their footing in a place that is still strange to them.
Throughout the book, this same attentiveness appears repeatedly. Cornelius Lynch does not present these missionaries as flawless or extraordinary; he presents them as people who entered into the needs of their time and stayed long enough for trust to be built. He acknowledges the limits and difficulties of their contexts — poverty, conflict, overwork, illness — without reducing their lives to hardship narratives. What emerges is a record of constant service carried across continents and decades.
The book also traces where many of these missionaries are now buried marking the places across the world where their lives came to rest and where their memory is held: graves in China, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Zambia, France, Scotland and England. It is a powerful reminder of how far their lives travelled and how deeply they became rooted in the communities they served.
That Their Good Deeds May Not Be Forgotten ensures that this long arc of service is preserved with accuracy, gratitude and depth. For the OLA, it situates our Sisters, past and present, within a wider story of faith lived through action, service and companionship. It reminds us that the work of mission continues to evolve, yet remains grounded in the same essential commitments: to stand with people in their realities, to respond with integrity, and to hold the dignity of each person at the centre of our presence.