The long road begins

The long road begins

30 November 1909. Co-founder of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor, Edward (Ted) McGrath is ordained a priest of the Society of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at St Mary’s Cathedral by His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Moran. It is the start of a long, fruitful and at times, lonely, vocation. Father McGrath has spent the past eight years studying at the MSC seminary at Kensington, NSW. Despite his incomplete schooling, he proves to be a capable student who, in time, can express his thoughts in French and Latin as readily as he can in English. Following his ordination, Father McGrath is appointed to Ngahere, a West Coast village within the Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand. He is recalled to Randwick in early 1911 and is appointed priest-in-charge of the Coogee parochial district. The recently-built St Brigid’s Church has no presbytery, so Father McGrath lives with the MSC community at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Randwick.

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For further reading, visit our resources page where you can discover more about the Our Lady's Nurses for the Poor, Eileen O'Connor, Fr Edward (Ted) McGrath and the work of the Brown Nurses.
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