Requiem Mass was celebrated for Mother Mary Martin, founder of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church beside the hospital she had built in Drogheda. Co Louth, yesterday. She died on Monday aged 82.
Educated in Dublin and the Holy Child College, Harrogate, Yorkshire, she was the eldest of a family of 12 and trained as a Voluntary Aid Defence nurse in Britain before going on to serve in France and Malta during the First World War. She returned to Dublin to train in midwifery and in 1921, working as a missionary in Nigeria, conceived the idea of founding an order of medical missionaries.
She started the Medical Missionaries in Africa a year after Pope'Pius X1 removed the Church ban against missionary orders involving themselves in all types of medical work in 1937. The order now has around 500 members with hospitals and clinics all over Africa.
Cardinal Conway, Primate of All Ireland; Mr a Dalaigh, the Irish President; and Mr Liam Cosgravc, the Irish Prime Minister, are among those who have paid tribute to her work. She has been in hospital -since 1967.
Fight to aid sick — P3