Sister Helena Fouhy, who has been a Brigidine nun for 70 years, is pictured with a book her great-niece and god daughter made called Our Great-Grand-Amazing Aunt.
Sister Helena Fouhy, who has been a Brigidine nun for 70 years, is pictured with a book her great-niece and god daughter made called Our Great-Grand-Amazing Aunt.
NOT FOR one moment as she grew up did Helena Margaret Fouhy think she'd ever be wearing a habit. She dreamed of working to save to be able to travel the world. However God had a different plan for her.
She entered the Brigidine Sisters in 1942, taking her final vows 70 years ago, two months before she turned 21.
Last Sunday at St Brigid's in Pahiatua as she, her family, friends and church celebrate this milestone in her service, Sister Helena will be renewing her vows to continue serving God through the Catholic church.
Born to Thomas Fouhy and Charlotte Judd, in 1923, Sister Helena was the last child and second daughter of eight children born to deeply committed Catholic parents.
The children were raised at Marima "in the green valley of sunshine" on a sheep and cattle farm on land her father settled. They grew up with a deep conviction about their Catholic faith.
"From a very young age I can remember the family saying the rosary ... I remember being under the piano playing with the pedals."
Helena's faith grew from there, as did her siblings' faith, with an older brother entering the priesthood and her only sister, Mel, also becoming a nun.
"Mum and Dad nurtured our faith. They had a very deep faith."
Sister Helena, given the religious name Sister Paulinus, was eventually professed as a Brigidine Sister on September 8, 1944.
She reverted to the name her parents gave her in 1971.
The Fouhy family is a very close one with only three siblings still surviving. They keep in close contact. Pat lives across the road from Sister Helena and they see each other daily.
"She's my kid sister," Pat said.
Meanwhile, Sister Mel is in a rest home in Sydney, with telephone contact regularly made to ensure those ties aren't broken.
But old age is catching up with her older sister these days, said Sister Helena, who visited her recently.
"She kept saying 'I'm looking at myself'. It was kind of a jolt to my system."
Sister Helena Fouhy has been a nun for 70 years Brigidine Sisters. Pictured Sister Helena back row fourth from left when she was know as Sister Paulinus. PHOTO SUPPLIED
It was as a teenager in the middle of deciding her future in the last year of school that Sister Helena was called to serve God. It was something she admits came out of the blue after previously stating she'd never be seen wearing a Brigidine habit. But she was destined to become a Brigidine Sister despite voicing her opposition to entering the convent while talking to a visiting Mother Superior.
"Well, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I put my foot in it very badly in 1940 ... the provincial of the New South Wales and New Zealand congregation was over here and I was introduced to her. The sister who introduced her said rather pointedly, 'She has a sister [who is] a nun'. The Provincial said, 'Are you going to be a nun too?' I said 'No'."
"I said if I had, it would have been a different story. 'I don't have a vocation so you don't have to worry'," she says. "She said, 'If you were a nun, what would you be?' I looked her straight in the eye and said, 'Mother, you will never see me wearing a Brigidine habit' ... I had no intention of spending my life in a habit."
That all changed while boarding at St Bride's Convent School in Masterton -- the school of her choice with her sister going to Sacred Heart in Wellington -- when one night she knew God was calling her.
She soon had to eat her earlier words.
At her reception a few years later, Mother Anthony remembered Sister Helena's resolve.
"She took me by the shoulders and turned me around and said, 'I'm just looking to see what you look like in a Brigidine habit'. I could have hit her on the spot but I thought I better not. I kind of had to back-track, didn't I? I honestly did not intend entering the convent. I had other things I wanted to do."
Those things were travelling, working to travel and becoming a teacher, Sister Helena says.
"I liked to travel. I used to say to my mother, 'I'm going to work until I've got enough money to go somewhere and then I'll come back and work until I've got enough money to go somewhere else'. Anyway the convent was nowhere in my calculations."
One night after farewelling a couple of the boys going overseas to war it hit her. She says she went to the chapel at boarding school during free time and recalls the night back on June 27, 1941 clearly.
"A friend and I talked about it ... Well I sort of, I don't know ... I thought, 'What's it all about, life?'."
She was confronted at the right time, she says.
"Mother Aquinas was coming out of the chapel and goes, 'What are you going to do next year'. I said, 'Oh, yes I'm entering'. Don't ask me why because I don't know. The die was cast. I couldn't do anything about it after that. I couldn't very well go back on it once I said it and the rest was history," she says smiling with a laugh in her voice.
She wrote a letter to her parents about her decision.
"Mum wrote back and said she was very happy for me. I think Mum would have really liked to have been a nun herself ... and Dad obviously took a few days to take it in. He wasn't shocked but I think in the back of his mind, he really didn't want me to go. Then he wrote me this beautiful letter. I still have it today. He said, 'If that is what you want to do and feel [as] if God is calling you, then I have no intention of stopping you. I have no intention of standing in your way'."
Afterwards, unbeknown to those aboard the ship taking her to Randwick, Sydney, there were submarines in the Tasman nearby, Sister Helena says.
"It was interesting ... it gave us the reality of what war was about."
She went on to complete 25 years of primary school teaching in music, mathematics, clothing and religious studies at convents in Johnsonville, Masterton, Carterton and Titahi Bay before heading into secondary teaching at Porirua's Catholic school, Viard College and Raphael's High School in Cowra, New South Wales.
"It's been a long time ... "It's been a great ride alright."
Sister Helena has also served at Palmerston North and serves in St Brigid's Parish in Pahiatua and she has written three books: One Love, Many Faces about the Brigidine Sisters' first 100 years in New Zealand, a family history called This Tree Has Roots and a history of Nikau, Marima and Waiwera districts titled Green Valley Of Sunshine.
"I've always loved writing, history and research. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You find one little piece of the puzzle then go off and find another."
Asked if she has ever questioned her calling, she quickly admits she has.
She got through these humps through "prayer and by rationalising", she says.
"Sometimes it's been hard to rationalise."
Once she was about to write for a dispensation but her vows were serious to make in the first place and she soon realised her vocation was to serve, Sister Helena says. "It ended up being a very different letter ... it's a very serious thing [to take vows]. It's not just something you enter into without thinking very seriously. In writing that letter, I couldn't complete it because I had to stop and look at my values and what I really wanted. It was only a part of me that was being a bit of a coward at the time."
As they grew up, the Fouhy children were taught to resolve issues themselves, she says.
"We grew up with the attitude, if you have a problem you have to find the answer. That was very much part of New Zealand outlook," she says.
"I think we have grown up very independent and strong-minded, pig-headed as some people would say."
But the convent isn't the easy life people envisage. Living in a convent isn't like living in Heaven as some people mistakenly think, she says.
"Life is life and no matter were you live you are dealing with people. You still have the same issues in life, definitely. You have the same concerns the same worries when people are sick. When a member of your family dies, you have the same emotions. You are a human being. You react to things the same as other people."
However, if there is one thing she regrets, it is the loss of the habit, as a mark of dedication.
"It makes a statement to people ... it speaks of values, well I hope it does.
"I really feel we should have kept some form of dress that made a statement of who we are. A habit did. It said to people, 'These are women who have got values and they are prepared to let the world know they have got them. As witness value the habit was very important. So for that reason, I'm sorry we gave it up."
But she proudly wears her Brigidine silver heart, which was given at her final vows and is extremely important to her, Sister Helena says.
"I've never been without it."
Today, sadly many people put their own needs before the needs of their family or others, resulting in a selfish society, she says.
The answer can be found in living by the 10 Commandments, "a natural law set in stone", the devoted Sister says.
Many people expected everything to be handed to them, which was wrong.
"Children especially say, 'what are you going to give me?' For me that's horrifying. We have lost our morality. The 10 Commandments are a written form of natural law, preserving our society," she says.
"If you had no religion and if you lived by those it would be a wonderful world. Natural law was there long before the 10 Commandments."
For Sister Helena, serving has been a blessing. Today she celebrates with family and the Brigidine Sisters at an afternoon tea. Tomorrow at 11am she will be renewing her vows at St Brigid's Church followed by a parish luncheon.
