Rose Whitty

Born at Dublin, Ireland, 24 November, 1831; died 4 May, 1911. Of her two sisters one became a religious of the Sacred Heart ; the other, like herself, joined the Order of St. Dominic and in 1870 led a band of sisters to New Zealand, where she laboured till her death in 1911. Sister Rose entered St. Catherine's Convent, Sion Hill, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, in her nineteenth year, 25 March, 1849. Seventeen years later, at the request of Bishop Moran, who then had charge of the Eastern Vicariate of South Africa, she with five others began their work at Post Elizabeth, 23 November, 1867. She was prioress for twenty-five years of Rosemary Convent, which she founded. The diamond jubilee of her religious profession was celebrated in 1910, and a Mother Rose scholarship was founded as an appropriate memorial of her long devotion to the work of education. Her good health continued till within a month or two of her death in her eightieth year. With every mark of public veneration her remains were laid to rest in the convent cemetery of Emerald Hill Priory, one of the convents which she had founded, on 6 May, 1911.