Katherine McCarthy
Katherine McCarthy
1895 – 1971
Brave Irish Nurse
This is the story of an Irish woman who risked her life many times to save others, especially through two world wars.
Who was she?
Her name was Katherine McCarthy. She was born in County Cork in 1895. At the age of 18, she entered a convent and became a nun, taking on the religious name of Sister Marie-Laurence. At age 19, she was transferred as a nurse to a hospital in Bethune, Northern France, shortly before the outbreak of WW1. During the war, Bethune was a major medical center for wounded soldiers. Here, Sister Marie-Laurence worked long hours tending to the wounded and the dying.
After the war, she emigrated to America joining a convent there, but returned to Bethune some 20 years later to continue her work as a nurse. Sister Marie-Laurence once more got caught up in another world war. As well as nursing the sick and wounded, she was a member of the French Resistance, helping many dozens of allied soldiers to escape. Unfortunately, in 1941 she was betrayed, arrested and tortured by the Gestapo.
Eventually, she was sent to the notorious Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. There she witnessed many horrors and even though she suffered from typhus and starvation, she managed to survive and was rescued by the Russian army in 1945.
She was Liberated by the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945 , taken first to Sweden and then back to London where she was greeted as the hero she surely was.
Her Legacy
Sister Marie-Laurence eventually returned to her native Ireland, where she became Mother Superior of the Honan Home Convent in Cork for elderly people in Cork.
She was awarded the Medaille de la Resistance by France, received the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct Medal for services during the enemy occupation of North-West Europe and the ‘Black Cat’ emblem of the Maquis.
Sister Marie-Laurence passed away in 1971 and is buried in St Finbarr’s Cemetery. During her lifetime, her strong faith helped her endure life’s toughest challenges, but she never lost her belief in the power of the human spirit to overcome cruelty and injustice.
Irish people celebrated
In 2014, the contribution of Irish men and women to the French Resistance during the World Wars was officially recognized in a ceremony at the Irish College in Paris. Sister Marie-Laurence’s great niece, Fiona McCarthy, said it was a miracle her great aunt survived. The Nazis had condemned her to death. She survived the concentration camp where she was starved, contracted typhus and escaped being selected for the gas chambers four times. Her courage, resourcefulness and self-sacrifice remind us of the qualities that characterized a selfless life.
