In 1928 a little old lady began to attend the monthly meetings of the Ladies Sodality at the Sacred Heart convent in Leeson Street, Dublin. She was rather conspicuous among the well-dressed ladies – for one thing she looked her seventyone years with her cheerful wrinkled face; and then there was the shapeless grey cloak she wore and the old-fashioned straw hat. In fact, Mother Lavery, the Sacred Heart nun in charge of the group had doubts about her suitability although she was certainly the most prayerful of them.
A few enquiries revealed that Miss Inie Elizabeth Newcombe had become a Catholic at the age of seventy after spending most of her adult life as a missionary in China, and then pioneering the Salvation Army in Japan, where she rose to the rank of Ensign.
Fr. Michael Egan S.J. became her friend and director at that time and described Inie (rhymes with ‘tiny’) as ‘a comfortable little body it did one good to meet’. But she was a tough character and her love for her Saviour had enabled her to adapt to Roman Catholicism with the same determination with which she had learnt Oriental languages and customs. She even told Fr. Egan, ‘If the Catholic Church had any use for me in China I would gladly go back’. Her one desire was to live entirely for God and spend her life in His service and saving souls. Inie, however, had one worry: the Protestant friends with whom she lived respected her new faith; but if she became seriously ill, they would never allow a priest to enter their house. One of the nuns to whom she confided her problem came up with a novel solution: Wales at that time was the nearest thing to the Missions. Why not go to live in a poor Welsh parish where she could help financially and add her prayers to the small congregation.
A certain Fr. Leopold Cunningham of Pwllheli was appealing for funds to build a church at Portmadoc in Wales, and it was to him that she wrote asking if she could join his flock and live near the church with a Catholic family. Of course, she received a warm invitation to come over and join them; Mrs. Jones would be delighted to give her a room and her meals.
Many of Inie’s friends told her it was a foolish thing to do at her age, especially as the Welsh winters were so cold and wet. So she prudently made arrangements to stay with some French nuns at Droitwich during the following winter. In the Spring of 1931 she said goodbye to her older sister Mina, the only one left of her five sisters and three brothers, all orphaned at an early age and brought up by an aunt in Blackrock (but that is another story).
A warm welcome awaited her in Pwllheli and she made many new friends. She spent long hours in the little church close to the Blessed Sacrament. It seemed to her a corner of heaven.
One day she confided to Fr. Cunningham that she had always been attracted by the total consecration of religious vows. As a child she had watched from her bedroom window the Dominican nuns from the nearby Sion Hill convent. But the seed had lain buried for many years under the hard crust of antiCatholicism in which she had grown up. She and three of her sisters had offered themselves for the Chinese mission of the Evangelical Church of Ireland. Her sisters all died in China – one as a martyr in 1895.
Fr. Cunningham surprised Inie by saying that it might not be so impossible for her to become a nun because he had recently attended the Clothing ceremony of an elderly lady at the newlyfounded Carmel at Dolgellau. Why not go and see the Mother Prioress!
But her first interview with the prioress, Mother Mary of Carmel, convinced her that the life would just be too hard for her – even with the dispensations from the fasting allowed at that time for benefactresses. Still longing for the complete consecration, she decided to write to the French nuns at Droitwich; but just then they wrote to say they were returning to France. Taking this as a sign from God, Inie once more went to plead her case with the Prioress who, seeing her obvious holiness, sent her to ask the permission of Mother Mary of Jesus, the prioress of the London Carmel from which Dolgellau had been founded in 1929. Mother Mary wrote to Dolgellau: ‘You must receive her. She is a saint. I love her. Give her my name.’
Inie entered on 8 September as Sister Mary of Jesus and received the Carmelite habit the following March. She was to live there until she died on 28 November 1936. As a born Storyteller, the young Sisters loved to ask her for a story at recreation. So it was that sixty years later the stories she told of her childhood and missionary years were written down by the Sisters who had lived with her. When to these were added information gathered from the archives of the Church Missionary Society and the Salvation Army, a detailed biography was written of a very lovable person whom God had moulded to holiness long before she became a Catholic. This book should hopefully be published soon.
A short version of her biography, Mission and Prayer, and a book about her life, Inie: a life of mission and prayer, are available from Messenger Publications’ online bookstore, or Tel: 01-6767491.