Margaret Anna Cusack

Margaret Anna Cusack
Memorial to Margret
Born	6 May 1829 Mercer Street/York Street, Dublin, Ireland
Died	5 June 1899 (aged 70) Leamington Spa, England, UK
Other names	Sister Mary Francis Cusack Mother Margaret
Occupation	Foundress of Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace religious congregation

Margaret Anna Cusack (born 6 May 1829 in a house at the corner of Mercer Street and York Street (now known as Cusack Corner),Dublin, Ireland – died 5 June 1899), also known as Sister Mary Francis Cusack and Mother Margaret, was first an Irish Anglican nun, then a Roman Catholic nun, and then a Religious Sister, and the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. By 1870 more than 200,000 copies of her works which ranged from biographies of saints to pamphlets on social issues had circulated throughout the world, the proceeds from which went towards victims of the Great Irish Famine and helping to feed the poor.

Margaret Anna Cusack was born in Coolock, County Dublin into a family of Church of Ireland gentry.

When she was a teenager, her parents separated and she went to live in Exeter with her grand-aunt, then in Devon where she joined the evangelical Christian Plymouth Brethren. At the age of 29 she was received into the Catholic Church and immediately joined the Poor Clares in Newry, County Down.

Motivated by the sudden death of her fiancé, Charles Holmes, she joined a convent of Puseyite Anglican nuns. However, disappointed at not being sent to the Crimean War she converted to Roman Catholicism and joined the Order of St. Clare (also known as the Poor Clares), a community of Franciscan nuns that taught poor girls. In 1861 she was sent with a small group of nuns to Kenmare, County Kerry, then one of the most destitute parts of Ireland, to establish a convent of Poor Clares.