by Mike Lennon
Sr Christina Dufficy, who died on December 14th last in the Mater Hospital, is remembered as being very talented with a wonderful personality who gave great leadership and service wherever she served. Her joyous and caring disposition was expressed in self-giving and dedicated commitment to her calling as a Mercy nun. She was blessed with beautiful qualities that she shared so generously with others right up to the end of her life, a life that had many brushes with death and required pioneering medical intervention to preserve it.
Christina was born on the 17th of December 1937 to Richard and Sarah (née Lennon) Dufficy of Clooneigh, Tulsk. She was educated in Tulsk National School and the Convent of Mercy Secondary School in Roscommon.
Following in the footsteps of her older sister Alicia (Sr Richard), she was received into the Mercy Order in Sligo by Bishop Vincent Hanly in July 1957 along with her neighbour, Josephine Breslin (Sr Stephanie). She took the religious name of Sr Mary Bernadine but changed it soon after to simply Sr Christina.
No stranger to the local dances and carnivals before entering the convent, her flair for music was recognised with a course at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, after which she went on to teach music in Athlone for three years. In a career change, Christina spent three years in Belfast studying nursing before being assigned to St John’s Hospital, Sligo where she nursed for four years. She next went to Drogheda on a two-year midwifery course.
In September 1972, Sr Christina joined the staff of the Sacred Heart Home in Roscommon which at the time had 250 patients. She was appointed matron of the Home in 1974. As the chaplain to the Home at the time, the celebrant of her funeral Mass, Fr Eugene McLoughlin said, “It was long before the Fair Deal was ever mentioned, but they got a very fair deal in the love and care they received from Sr Christina and her staff”. She developed cardiac problems in the mid-1980s and underwent heart bypass surgery in 1987. However, this was only a temporary solution, and she was put on a heart transplant waiting list in September 1990.
The tragic death of an 18-year-old girl from Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford in a horse-riding accident in January 1992 and the donation of her organs for transplant provided the heart Christina was waiting for. The eight-hour operation was performed by the famed surgeon, Maurice Neligan in the Mater Hospital, Dublin. Recovery was slow and she was given five years to live. That timeline did not stop Christina getting on with things and, as we now know, her new heart allowed her to lead an active and fruitful life over the following 32 years.
Fr McLoughlin remembers Christina telling him that meeting the mother of her young donor was the most emotional moment of her post-transplant recovery. She requested that her surgeon and donor be especially remembered at her funeral Mass.
Just six months after her transplant, Christina was cleared physically to participate in the European Transplant Games in Enschede, Holland. She won a gold medal in the five-kilometre walk and secured a silver medal in the golf tournament where she was the only female among nineteen men. Her caddy was her sister Alicia (Sr Richard) who, unfamiliar with golf jargon, asked the following day what a ‘dogleg’ was. In an interview with the Roscommon Champion, Christina said that medals never entered into it; “the message is that there is life after a transplant”.
After leaving the Sacred Heart Home, Christina studied pastoral care at the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, which led to a spell in Breeogue as a pastoral assistant with responsibility for the pastoral care of the sick in the Elphin diocese nursing homes. Her next assignment was as part of the Mercy Order leadership team for three years in Ballinasloe.
From her base at McAuley House, Roscommon, she took up her last appointment in 2002 as a pastoral assistant in the parish of Athleague & Fuerty. Over the following 20 years, Christina was involved in visiting the sick, preparing children for the sacraments, organising youth and adult choirs and serving on the Boards of Management of the local schools.
The former parish priest, Fr McLoughlin vouched for the great service she gave and how she endeared herself to the parishioners. She acted as organist and director of the Strokestown Church choir for some years, and also used her musical talent to entertain at old folks’ parties and functions to raise money for good causes.
Just three days short of her 87th birthday, Sr Christina’s heart finally gave way to the malign cancer that she bore with bravery and dignity while carrying on as normal up to the end. She now joins her parents, Richard and Sarah, her baby brother Michael, her brother Jerome and her sister in religion, Alicia who predeceased her by eleven months. She is survived by her brothers Richie and MJ (both in Limerick), her sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, grand-nephews, grand-nieces and a large circle of cousins and friends. She will be especially missed by the Mercy sisters in McAuley House and throughout the order’s Western Province.
Sr Christina’s funeral Mass was celebrated in the Sacred Heart Church, Roscommon by her lifelong friend, Fr Eugene McLoughlin along with concelebrants Fr Kevin Fallon, Fr Raul Cino, Fr Joe Fitzgerald, Fr Michael Breslin, Monsignor Gerard Dolan, Fr Michael O’Brien, Fr Francis Glennon, Fr Vincent Brennan SMA, Fr Francis Beirne, Fr JJ Gannon and Fr George Agger SVD. Her Month’s Mind Mass will be celebrated in the Sacred Heart Church, Roscommon at 11.30 on Sunday next, January 19th.
The final words Sr Christina left to be spoken at her funeral were written by Seamus Heaney and aptly apply to her life: “Here on earth my labours were stepping-stones to upper air; lives that suffer and come right are backlit by immortal light”.
