How the Mater Hospital has been part of Ireland’s history thanks to caring people like you…
Posted by Jim on June 12, 2024
The Mater Hospital on Eccles Street in Dublin opened its doors in 1861. Since then it has been powered by the kindness of the people of Ireland… caring people like you and your great, great grandparents…
The Mater Hospital MATER HOSPITAL FOUNDATION
James Sullivan shares the fascinating history of the Mater Hospital in Dublin and how the compassion that was the driving force behind this story continues today through the Mater Hospital Foundation…
Will you step back in time with me for a moment? I want to share the story of Ireland’s Mater Hospital, and how it’s been powered by kindness like yours right from the very start…
Put yourself in the crowd gathered on Eccles Street in Dublin, on a chilly late September morning in 1861.
It’s the aftermath of the Famine…
….thousands of families fleeing hunger have been forced into tenement slums.
….the death rate in Dublin is the highest in all of Europe.
But on this Tuesday morning, hope is in the air…
Because this is the day the Mater Hospital is opened.
And from the very beginning — despite having so little themselves — the Mater has been powered by the extraordinary kindness of the people of Ireland…
… by your great, great grandparents and mine.
You carry within you their same deeply-held values of compassion, concern and generosity passed down through generations of caring hearts like yours.
And it’s in honor of that same spirit of kindness that has kept the Mater strong for so many decades that I feel I can ask you this question –
Would you consider making a gift to the Mater Hospital Foundation in your Will?
Choosing the people and causes you want to remember with a special gift is a matter for your heart alone.
And, of course, your family is your first concern.
But after your loved ones are taken care of, a gift of just 1% or 2% of your estate to the Mater Hospital Foundation would see your love and compassion — the most beautiful and essential parts of yourself — live on within our centuries-old walls for hundreds of years to come.
It’s hard for us to imagine now just what the opening of the Mater Hospital meant to our great, great grandparents.
You see, before the Mater, there was hardly a person in Ireland with access to healthcare…
And if you were poor you had no chance. Were you or your child to get sick, your chances of survival were thin. It was as simple and brutal as that.
And it was that very injustice that Sister Catherine McAuley made it her mission to fight all those years ago. The Mater threw its doors open to all. It would be a hospital for the people.
Our hospital. Yours and mine. And nobody suffering would be denied care, no matter what. And although the modern Mater Hospital today looks very different to how it did in 1861…
…There remains one constant.
Because it was generous, resilient, and principled people like yourself who gave what little money they had so their hospital could endure for their children and grandchildren…
… for you and me.
And it’s kindness like yours that still powers our work to this day.