OTD: Kilkenny nun condemns prostitution and refuses to leave Vietnam

A Kilkenny Missionary Sister is defying the Viet Cong and has refused to quit Saigon.

She has also lashed out at the United States refugee rescue operation from Vietnam, accusing the Americans of ‘evacuating children for cuddling and prostitutes for sleeping with’.

Sister Mary Hayden, who is from Inistioge, has been in Vietnam for the past 17 years. She is the Mother Provincial of the Good Shepherd Sisters in that country.

She was a founder member of the Community’s house in Saigon and she also helped establish a second convent in Vietnam.

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Early on Wednesday morning, Saigon capitulated and up to mid-day no word had come through about her safety.

“We have got no word at all,” the Irish Provincial, Mother Teresa, told the Kilkenny People. “We do know that with the exception of Sister Mary, and another Irish nun, Sister Fidelma Haverty, all the Irish Sisters have left Vietnam.”

However, Mother Teresa was not surprised that Sister Mary had refused to quit Saigon.

“She is a person of tremendous faith and courage,” she said.

Sister Mary and Sister Fidelma refused to leave South Vietnam when British officials requested them to join the final British evacuation of Saigon last week.

The nuns are almost alone among British and British-protected social workers in refusing repeated appeals to leave.

The massive American evacuation of Vietnamese from Saigon was condemned by Sister Mary, who said Americans were ignoring Vietnamese whose lives were at stake in a Communist South Vietnam and ‘evacuating children for cuddling and prostitutes for sleeping with’.

“This last rush to the United States is the stupidest thing I have ever seen,” she said. “They’re rushing like bulls in a mist. Why doesn’t the US give preference to the people who are threatened?”

Taoiseach For City
Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave is coming to Kilkenny on Monday. It will be his first visit to the city since his election as Taoiseach.

He will visit the Kilkenny Design Workshops before attending the Fine Gael convention in the Newpark Hotel.

Mr Cosgrave’s visit is of historical interest to the people of Kilkenny.

His late father, WT Cosgrave, who as TD for Carlow-Kilkenny, was president of the Executive Council from 1922 to 1932.

He was a frequent visitor to Kilkenny, where he was first elected as a Sinn Féin member in the 1917 elections.

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