Social activist Sister Stan remembered at Dublin funeral

President Michael D. Higgins, Tánaiste Simon Harris, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, and former President Mary McAleese have arrived for the service at Donnybrook.

 Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who is attending the COP30 climate conference in Brazil, is being represented by an assistant.

The funeral missal features a quote from the founder of the Religious Sisters of Charity, of which Sister Stan was a member, which reads: “Do pray that justice may be accomplished in peace and that truth may prevail.”

Capuchin Franciscan friar and author Father Richard Hendricks, known as Brother Richard, led the service.

 Following the entrance hymn "The Deer's Cry," a musical version of the prayer, "St. Patrick's Breastplate," was sung.

Sister Stan, born Treasa Kennedy, grew up on a farm on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.

 At the age of 18, inspired by the work of its founder, Mary Aikenhead, she joined the Religious Sisters of Charity in 1958.

 She was sent to Kilkenny where she spent 19 years developing the county's social services.

 In 1974, the government appointed her the first chairperson of the National Committee on Pilot Schemes for Poverty Alleviation.

 She moved to Dublin where in 1985 she founded Focus Point, now Focus Ireland. Following her research on the needs of homeless women in Dublin in the 1980s, she founded Focus Point, now Focus Ireland.

 That same year, she was appointed by the European Commission to coordinate a rural poverty alleviation program across Europe.

 He also founded other organizations: a meditation center called The Sanctuary in 1998; the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) in 2001 and Young Social Innovators (YSI) in 2021, an initiative to encourage students to become more socially engaged.