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Long walk to sainthood for nun who put her best foot forward
Mary Ward was not the kind of woman who favoured the quiet life.
Born in Ripon in 1585, Mary grew up a devout Catholic. She founded the women's religious order the Congregation of Jesus and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. However, she also encouraged her religious sisters to throw off their habits, take to the stage and generally spent most of her life as a thorn in the Vatican's side.
However, time it seems is a great healer and the woman once dismissed as a heretic by Rome is finally on the path to becoming a saint.
A panel of theologians has recently concluded, that Mary lived a life of "heroic virtue" and are now recommending she be declared Venerable. It's only the first step in the very long process of canonisation, but for the woman who caused many a Papal headache it's nevertheless a landmark decision.
The move should reawaken interest in the life of one of the county's most influential figures and her story doesn't lack colour.
The late 16th century was no time to be Catholic. Britain was in the grip of religious intolerance and Mary's father was regularly fined for failing to attend services at the nearby Protestant church. While the family refused to bow to religious law of the land, when two of Mary's uncles became involved in the Gunpowder Plot, the Wards became a target of government troops and Mary spent much of childhood moving between the homes of her relatives.
By the time she was 15, Mary found her calling and moved to France to become a nun. It wasn't a happy experience. The Franciscan
order she joined was strictly orthodox, and little suited to the adventurous spirit and independent thinking of its newest recruit.
While others would have hid their resentment, Mary decided to go it alone and at the turn of the 17th-century founded her own order. It was just the beginning of the controversy which would overshadow the rest of her life.
While the rest of the world seemed largely content with women being seen and not heard, Mary had a very different approach to gender politics. Her fellow nuns were encouraged to work with the poor and unfortunate, traditional habits were done away with and when she insisted they be allowed to act in plays, word soon spread and they were instantly labelled "chattering hussies".
Mary, often described as courageous, tenacious and brimming with forthright commonsense, had no intention of being cast as an enemy of the Church she loved so much and the only solution was to walk the 1,500 miles from France to Rome in the hope she could secure a meeting with Pope Urban VIII and convince him she was not the heretic many thought her to be.
Her efforts made little impression and on her arrival in 1631 at the age of 46, she was immediately thrown in prison. A year later, Mary was released, but her lifelong fight for recognition was over. The order was closed down and Mary returned home to Yorkshire, where she died in a siege during the English Civil War.
For many years after her death and burial in the churchyard of St Thomas' in Osbaldwick, the Church continued to turn a blind eye to Mary's obvious legacy. The mood finally began to soften in the 1930s when Pope Pius XI opened her case for sainthood. The wheels of canonisation notoriously move incredibly slowly, but with a 5,500 page document on Mary's life now being scrutinised by the various bishops and cardinals, it's hoped she will be made Venerable next year.
"Mary Ward had a vision of the equality of men and women before God at a time when universities were still discussing whether women had souls," says theology lecturer Sister Gemma Simmonds, a member of the Congregation of Jesus, the name by which Ward's order is known today. "She was ferociously persecuted by the Church, but she never allowed a word of bitterness or resentment to appear in her writings.
"I want her to be canonised. I want justice for her and I want the justification for what women can do in the Church."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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