Sister Irene Hughes, SSND
June 22, 1936 – September 20, 2024
The third daughter of Anna Mae Collins and John Joseph Hughes, Irene Marie Hughes was born in Malden, Massachusetts, on June 22, 1936. Her father had come from Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, in 1924; her mother was a Malden native. Many years later, Irene wrote this tribute to her family, it is a classic description of growing up at that moment in history.
I remember my sister Margaret being born four years later, and being an Irish Catholic American family; the Church, our parish, Immaculate Conception, was important, and our family life was happy. My Dad worked very hard. We lived a simple life, and had the basics: food, clothing, shelter, but nothing in excess. I don’t remember going away for vacations. We went to the public beaches in summer, and skating and sledding in winter and rode our bikes in the fall.
My mother made many sacrifices raising four girls, so we could have a new dress or shoes. I liked my sisters and we got along pretty well. When we were all in school, my mother took a job and we all took on responsibilities for the house and meals. We learned to work together and help each other.
The Hughes girls were all educated by SSNDs at the parish school and Girls Catholic High School. Irene loved her first-grade teacher, Sister Brigittine (Cronin), “because she was very kind and gentle with me.” Irene loved high school, had good friends, went to dances, and parties and games. “By the time I was a senior I knew I was going to at least try and see if I had a vocation. I was impressed with the sisters who taught me; they were joyful and caring.”
With 51 other young women Irene went to the Candidature in Baltimore on August 28, 1954, and “although she missed her family and friends, adjusted well to her new surroundings.” She found the novitiate year of quiet prayer and solitude long and was anxious to do the work of the Lord.” As a Junior sister, she studied for a year, and then received a “surprise” obedience to Caguas, Puerto Rico as her first mission. “My knowledge of Spanish was nil,” she later wrote, but I received “tremendous support, love, and encouragement from the 22 sisters in my local community.
After teaching for eight years in Holy Name of Jesus Grade and Junior High Schools, Irene was assigned to Caguas’s Notre Dame High School in 1965. She had become fluent in the Spanish language, as “she grew to know and love the Puerto Rican people and their culture.” As Superior, Principal and ninth grade teacher, she then served at San Alfonso Academy in Aguas Buenas. At 32, she was the oldest in the small community; no one else had yet taken final vows. A short stint at San Agustin, Puerta da Tierra, while living at Miramar convent, rounded out Irene’s 19 years on La Isla del Encanto. They came to an end in 1977, but not her devotion to Puerto Rico and its language.
Elected by the sisters of Puerto Rico as delegate to the new Wilton Provincial Chapter (later name--Assembly) to grapple with the vision of Vatican II, Irene experienced “the time of great pain and division” as the Island became a Region of the Wilton Province in 1972. The previous lack of fostering leader-ship among the Puerto Ricans by the USA sisters became a very painful and divisive topic. Irene wrote many years later that “I really had to look at who I was and what I had been doing to form a native Church. Slowly, painfully, the Region grew, and trust was established once again. This was a very significant time in my religious life, and one that influenced me regarding my enabling of others.”
She was also a participant in the GAAP Program in the summer of 1976; the Global Apostolic Awareness Program, was founded by SSND Mission Coordinator Sister Maria Jose Tresch. Irene was overwhelmed by the poverty in Honduras and Guatemala, and the control some people have over others’ lives. She called this time her “loss of innocence, came home very anti-American and had to work through that.” Later she was asked to coordinate the program but declined because she felt that should be done by a sister who had lived there.
Being a teacher and later Principal at St. Stephen-St. Edward School, in Warwick, New York, helped Irene make her transition back to the States and her first time teaching in English. She grew to ‘love my americanos, their families, and the parish. It was just right for me.” Her Dad’s death was a “tremendous loss, at this special time in her life.” Granted a time of sabbatical as a returned missionary, she attended “Active Spirituality for a Global Community,” at the College of St. Joseph in Ohio. Irene described this as a “time of study, prayer, reflection, and of stretching ourselves to embrace a global vision.”
After one more year in Warwick as Principal, Irene was asked to become a member of a new Renewal Team, four sisters, two on the Council, two full time, concerned with planning and carrying out activities and commitments in all the local communities. It was initiated by the Assembly as an organized way to raise all sisters’ awareness of global issues. Four options were chosen by communities, because a hallmark of the effort was “different strokes for different folks.” She and Kay O’Connell lived at Most Holy Redeemer, at 4th Street in New York, and traveled the Province in a little blue hatchback Nova. Later Irene and Joan Jungerman carried on the vision while living and working at Madonna Convent, Fort Lee, New Jersey.
From 1985 on, teaching Spanish was Irene’s loved ministry—at St. Mary, Greenwich, Connecticut; and then at Msgr. Ryan High School, and Elizabeth Seton Academy, both in Dorchester, Massachusetts, until 2004. This was followed by a four-month sabbatical in San Antonio, Texas, called “Ministry to Ministers,” and then a ten-year commitment to the ESL classes at Province-sponsored Caroline House in Bridgeport. The last time Irene updated her autobiography she wrote, “I found this to the perfect place at this time in my life.” She lived at Wilton, first in the yellow house and then at Villa Notre Dame. In 2021 she was part of the large community that moved to The Watermark on Park Avenue in Bridgeport. After a short illness, Irene died at nearby St. Vincent Hospital.
At St. Andrew Church in Bridgeport, on October 2, Irene’s Mass of Christian Burial was presided over by Msgr. Robert Crofut. Sister Eileen Shea conducted the loving remembrance of Irene at the Wake Service; Peg Regan recalled fondly their years together in Aguas Buenas. Irene’s sister, Mrs. Catherine (Kay) Post, the oldest of the four girls in the family, was present with her sons Billy, Stephen, and Stephen’s wife. Billy spoke for the family at the Wake; Stephen did a reading at the liturgy. Burial followed in Bethel, Connecticut, at St. Mary Cemetery.
Sister Kay O’Connell, SSND
