Sr Seraphina Weston trained nurses from every continent

One of the best-known nuns in Portiuncula Hospital, Sr. Seraphina Weston, FMDM, has passed away in her 93rd year. For 29 years she was Principal of the Madonna College of Nursing Training School, in Portiuncula, where her graduates came from every continent.

​On 24th May 1953 Mother M. Margaret, who initiated the project, lectured at the opening of new College of Nursing where the first students were all FMDM sisters but permission was given by the Irish Nursing Board to begin training lay student nurses also. Sr. Seraphina was appointed principal and large numbers of students trained there until the cessation of the education system, which was replaced by a Bachelor of Nursing Degree awarded by Universities in September 2002. The Sisters had transferred ownership of Portiuncula to the Western Health Board in 2001.

Sr. Seraphina was born in Castlebar on 5th April 1927 and was baptised Annie Teresa. She was the second eldest in a family of three sisters and two brothers. A Mayo woman, through and through, she became a member of the Congregation in August 1945 and did her nursing studies in St. Luke’s Hospital, Guilford, Surrey. It was there she met her life-long friend and esteemed colleague, Sr. Madeleine, who had come from Penang, Malaysia, to peruse her nurse studies. Little did they know they were destined to work together for very many years in the Madonna School of Nursing attached to Portiuncula Hospital. A hospital official told the “Surrey Advertiser” in an article that appeared 67 years ago that Sr. Seraphina was “one of the most brilliant trainees to pass through the Training School in Guilford.”

​She was described in Portiuncula as “a conscientious and exacting teacher and she demanded the best from her students. She had the ability to clarify difficult information in simple, intelligible language. She saw the greatest potential in every student, she had their welfare at heart and was always aware that she was preparing them for the sacred duty of caring for the sick.” Sr. Seraphina had a great yearning to go to Africa to work for the poor and sick, so after 29 years as Principal of the Nurse Training School she left for Zimbabwe in 1983, where she worked for six years. On her return to Ireland she pursued a Diploma in Religious Studies in Dundalk and after a year came back to Portiuncula to do some part-time teaching. Many of her past students at the College came from all over Ireland and abroad, as did representatives of Portiuncula Hospital, to bid farewell to a nun that will be remembered for “a good life lived in a spirit of compassion, generosity, kindness and love.”