IRISH NUNS IN PORTUGAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 179, 1 September 1876, Page 12

IRISH NUNS IN PORTUGAL.

++ In Lisbon there is to be seen the Convent of Bom Successo which is kept "by Irish Dominican Nuts. This convent is one of the many Irish, houses which the traveller is sure to meet with in Catholic countries, and was founded in the year 1639, in the very worst days of the Irish persecutions. It owes its origin to a promise given by Philip 11. of Spain to Father Dominick O'Daly, on condition that he would succeed in raising a regiment in Ireland for the purpose of fighting for the Royal cause in the low countries. Father Dominick O'Daly was an Irish Dominican Friar, a native of Tralee, County Kerry, whose love for his bleeding country took practical form and shape in the foundation of two Irish, houses in Lisbon, one for the education and training of Irish Dominicans for the home mission, Corpo Santo, the other a home for nuns of the same order. Out of the former went forth an illustrious army of martyrs and holy confessors, who fought, bled, and died for the ji faith. Throughout the chequered history of the latter Bom Successo has been almost miraculously preserved, and though the hand of the persecutor has swept away religious establishments from Portugal, the Irish Sisters of St. Dominick still hold possession of their beautiful home on the banks of the Tag-us. At thepresent moment it possesses a large and efficient community, held in deserved esteem by the Portuguese, on account of the superior education it offers to the higher classes. The present generation of nuns have seen pass through, their hands ladies of the highest rank and nobility, and, it is with a holy satisfaction, they find that, with attachment to their former mistresses, their pupils have carried into theiv different paths of life the lessons of early piety and religion which they have imbibed from their lips.