Mother Suzanne Aubert 1900 - 1913

By the late 1890s, the isolated convent at Hiruharama was proving unsuitable as a large home for young children, several of whom arrived already frail, sickly and very vulnerable in epidemics. Archdiocesan and government health officials thought that Mother Aubert would be better to continue this part of her work in the capital city of Wellington. Therefore, on 6 January 1899 Suzanne and two sisters arrived to set up their first community in the capital.

During the subsequent expansion in Wellington, however, sisters continued to live and teach in Hiruharama, the birthplace of their congregation, and they have retained their links of land and residence ever since; they are tangata whenua, birthright people of the Whanganui River.
Across the turn of the century, the Liberal Government was setting in place the basis of New Zealand’s innovative welfare state, a development that brought worldwide attention to focus on New Zealand, and social reformers such as André Siegfried and Beatrice and Sidney Webb to come out to New Zealand to observe and comment on its pioneering democratic socialism. Suzanne Aubert’s young congregation of sisters was responding to the context of their times.

Very soon the sisters had established in Wellington a centre of welcome for disadvantaged people in need of food and clothes, New Zealand’s first home for permanently disabled people, and first crèche for the young children of working parents. They also began to train in healthcare with the intention of one day becoming state-recognised nurses able to work once more with vulnerable newborn babies and to offer hospital treatment to the needy. All their services were free of charge and available to all regardless of race, sex, age or creed. ‘All creeds or none’ became an appreciative catch-cry of Mother Aubert’s many supporters.

By 1907, the imposing, large structure of the Home of Compassion was opened, standing out with confidence against the hillside of Island Bay. As the motherhouse of the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, it symbolised that New Zealand’s congregation intended to survive and grow, while as the prospective centre of their more controversial works, it represented their philosophy and the input of so many who supported it.

Suzanne’s wish to care for babies from birth, hence sheltering their mothers from bearing the sole blame and ignominy, met with some opposition. Among government circles there was, understandably, a prevailing theory that babies benefited if their mothers kept and nursed them for six months. This became a condition for eligibility to state aid. But the woman’s identity would then be made public and Suzanne was concerned for the mother’s wellbeing both socially and spiritually. The child would also most likely be fostered out and she had similar concerns about possible harmful influences in the fostering of children. Her contemporary Catholic theology fuelled her concern for the children’s souls.

Within Catholic circles, some believed she should be offering her services only to Catholics, rather than making need her sole criterion. They also worried that in a multi-denominational society with the potential of sectarianism (though, in New Zealand, this has never been as marked or rabid as in other new colonial societies) any controversial occurrence such as multiple deaths in crowded orphanages would damage the reputation of Catholicism in general. There had been precedent for this elsewhere.

By 1910, when Suzanne set out to develop a similar, though smaller-scale, home in Auckland, the men of the hierarchy were changing. Bishop Henry Cleary succeeded Bishop George Lenihan in Auckland; in Wellington Thomas O’Shea very soon became coadjutor archbishop to help ageing Archbishop Francis Redwood. Redwood had been more liberal and understanding towards this exceptional woman. He recognised her significance as a role-model for society as a whole. But some clergy, including O’Shea, would have considered him too indulgent in her regard. O’Shea’s brief, at a time when Rome was tightening up controls across the wider Catholic world, was to make affairs more orderly, within prescribed limits. With some justification, Cleary and he judged that Suzanne was overstretching the capacities of her small sisterhood, and they could also use this genuine and commendable concern to rein her in definitively. After all, she was now old.

Having a community in Auckland meant that Suzanne’s congregation was active in more than one diocese, and therefore theoretically eligible to proceed from simple diocesan status under a local bishop, to that of a large, papal congregation answerable to a Roman cardinal. Cleary and O’Shea suspected this as a motive for the foundation of the Auckland house. It was not Suzanne’s prime motive, but it was the natural progression of most congregations as their growing numbers allowed their work to expand. Ironically, the opposition of these men to Suzanne served ultimately to accelerate the process.

In November 1912, a Visitation and an Extraordinary General Chapter brought matters to a head. The strains of the sisters’ workload were revealed and the response was to order certain works to be changed or closed down: working alongside Maori up the Whanganui River valley was to go, as was taking in babies from birth. The sisters were to operate more within the Catholic parish system; in this way they would sink below the denominational horizon.

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