Nano Nagle Venerated and Venerable: Childhood and Teenage Years

In a take on the “nature or nurture” quandary as to how human character is formed, is the question are saints born or become so through their life experiences. Nano Nagle’s father predicted she would become a saint. As we continue our reflections on our San Francisco 170^th Anniversary, we know that Nano Nagle was venerated by the people of her time and continues to be today. The Roman Catholic Church has also declared her Venerable, the second level towards canonization. In four reflections on the stages of Nano Nagle’s life, we will look at how she became both venerated and Venerable through the values, virtues, and vision she developed in response to the times in which she lived.

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PART ONE

Childhood and Teenage Years

In accounts of Nano Nagle’s early years, her family plays a key role. Born in 1718 in Ballygriffin, Ireland, the site of the Nagle’s estate, Nano Nagle’s family had held their lands for nearly four hundred years.  However, there were times in that history because of war and political actions that they lost that land. As one historian wrote, “It was a stormy history.”  The historian also noted that “a readiness for risk and suffering” was a part of Nano’s inheritance.
That inheritance of risk and suffering is the historical context of Nano’s childhood and teenage years. Because of the Penal Laws imposed by the British government on the people of Ireland, Nano’s childhood years were a period of intense persecution and depending on those enforcing the Penal Laws, imprisonment or loss of property was common.

Nano’s parents, Garrett and Ann Nagle, created a home environment for their seven children of stability and deep Catholic faith. In a time when educating Catholic children was difficult or forbidden, they sought traditional Irish education through the hedge schools and itinerant poets whose story telling preserved the cultural memory of the people.

As the eldest child in the family, Nano would have learned to value love of learning, her Catholic faith, and a sense of imagination derived from the poets. In a period of persecution and uncertainty, the Nagles taught their children to overcome bitterness and live moral lives. In the midst of their own life uncertainties and witnessing the many hardships of the people, they never doubted the presence of God.
Nano would value and develop the virtues as a child to cultivate relationships, to commit to her Catholic faith, to trust in the presence of God, and to live with empathy for the many impoverished and ignorant Irish people that she saw every day.

At twelve years of age, Nano’s parents sent her to France for a more formal education. France at that time was the refuge for thousands of Irish families driven out of Ireland by the Penal Laws. While it is not known where she originally studied, from sources it is known that she was surrounded by family and friends from Ireland. In her later teens and early twenties, Nano did go to Paris for further education and to learn the behaviors required of upper-class women. In the midst of formal education and social events, Nano would have noticed that wealthy French women held important roles in French society as leaders in the arts and in providing institutions of charity for the poor. She developed two important devotions – one to Saint John of God and one to the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

While participating in the opportunities and activities of “the world,” she began to form her vision of the world based on her earlier values. She had a growing awareness of the world of the poor and the role of education in the lives of those poor. She began to become an independent thinker and started to learn how to listen to the life around her to influence her own actions.

A story told over and over about Nano during these years is her experience returning home from a ball. During that return home early one morning, she noticed many working class people gathered outside a church waiting for Mass. She was struck by their devotion and it caused her to ponder about her own life in relation to the reality of poverty and needs she saw every day. This experience would lie dormant within her but eventually became a seed for her vision for the future.
In 1746, after fifteen years in France, Nano Nagle was called home because of family needs. This second phase of her life will be presented in Part Two.