In 1914 the number of countries with Diplomatic
representation at the Holy See was fourteen.
When his Pontificate ended in 1922 there were twenty-seven, including
Britain for the first time since the 17th Century,
Following the unification of Italy and the
annexation of the Papal States there were strained relations with the Italian
government who persuaded the allies to deny the Vatican representation at the
peace negotiations at Versailles in 1919 – something which caused Benedict huge
disappointment. The deeply flawed Treaty
was influential in creating conditions which led to the Second World War.
Possibly the first eye-witness account of the First
World War was written by a woman. A book
with the arresting title ‘The Irish Nuns at Ypres’ was published in1915 and
caused quite a stir. The nuns in
question had been forced to flee their convent in the Belgium town of Ypres
which was on the front line of battle from almost the beginning of the Great
War. The Benedictine Order first
established a community of Irish nuns in Ypres in the 17th
Century. The penal laws in Ireland would
have prevented them from establishing a convent in Ireland. They ran a school for girls, many of them
from Irish families. The Abbey of Our
Lady of Grace continued to attract Irish Sisters in the centuries that
followed. But in August 1914 their
tranquillity was shattered forever when Germany invaded Belgium. A series of battles between the Allied and
German troops with Ypres as the epicentre followed with huge loss of life. The nuns, known as the Irish Dames of Ypres,
hung on for several weeks in the town but eventually their beloved abbey was
destroyed by shellfire. They were forced
to flee, first to England and later to Ireland.
With the help of the British Army they managed to
leave Belgium and cross the English Channel by the end of 1914. They went to recuperate at Oulton Abbey in
Staffordshire. In Spring 1915 the book
about their plight was published, written by one of the nuns, Dame M Columba,
giving an account ‘of all that has befallen the Community since the coming of
the Germans to Ypres.’ She writes: ‘the
shells and bombs were flying in all directions and the explosions joined to the
firing of the guns resembled some huge machinery with its never-ceasing boom
and crash.’ She provides accounts of the
German shelling and the subsequent recapture of the town by Allied troops. She writes of an encounter with soldiers in
the trenches. On hearing that the nuns
were Irish Benedictines several of the troops shouted ‘Irish! So are we’ and
they all began singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. It was an Irish regiment – each soldier wore
the harp and shamrock on his collar and cap.
As the bombardment continued, the nuns added new petitions to their
daily prayers: ‘Dear St Patrick, as you once chased the serpents and venomous
reptiles out of Ireland please now chase the Germans out of Belgium.’ The nuns made badges of embroidered cloth
depicting the Sacred Heart which they distributed to the Allied troops.
John Redmond MP, the leader of the Irish
Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons who had secured the promise of Home
Rule for Ireland and encouraged Irishmen to join up to fight with Britain wrote
an introduction to the book. One of the
nuns, Dame Teresa was his niece. He
called for public support ‘to help those devoted and heroic nuns to go back to
Ypres.’ But in 1915, not wishing to
outstay their welcome in England, they began looking for a new home. They decided to return to Ireland. They placed an ad in The Irish Times in 1917
about opening ‘a Select Boarding School for a Limited Number of Young Ladies’
which would offer ‘High-class Education.’ The first house used was too small. They found more suitable property in
Connemara where in 1920 they bought a Victorian mansion called Kylemore,
overlooking a lake. This became the
school and their home in 1923 It
gradually achieved national and international renown. They never returned to Belgium. The school closed in 2010, but the ‘Irish
Nuns of Ypres’ still live in Kylemore Abbey.
