Venerable Nano Nagle

Honora "Nano" Nagle (c. 1718 – 26 April 1784) was an Irish Catholic religious sister who served as a pioneer of Catholic education in Ireland despite legal prohibitions. She founded the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly known as the Presentation Sisters, now a worldwide Catholic institute of women religious. She was declared venerable in the Catholic Church on 31 October 2013 by Pope Francis. Nano Nagle lived during the period when the Catholic majority in Ireland were subject to the anti-Catholic Penal Laws. The Catholic Irish were denied political, economic, social and educational rights that would have lifted them from mass poverty. The parliamentarian and philosopher, Edmund Burke, a younger cousin of Nagle who spent part of his childhood in her birthplace, described those laws: "Their declared object was to reduce the Catholics in Ireland to a miserable populace, without property, without estimation, without education." Nano Nagle was born in Ballygriffin, in the parish of Killavullen, County Cork, to Garrett and Ann (née Mathew(s) or Matthew(s)) Nagle. Though her exact date of birth is unknown, and the year of her birth disputed, Nagle is most likely to have been born in 1718. The name "Honora" given at baptism was soon replaced in the family circle by the affectionate name "Nano". She was the eldest of six or seven children, the others being Mary (omitted in many sources), Ann, Catherine, Elizabeth, David, and Joseph. Nagle was born in the Blackwater Valley in County Cork which possesses views of the distant Nagle Mountains. Much of this region was once the property of the Nagle family. Originally known as "de Angulo" or "D'Angulo", they were connected to some of the most prominent local families, and their ancestors had lived in the area for hundreds of years.