Sister Áine O’Connor has been a member of the Institute Leadership Team (ILT) since 2017. Previously, through Mercy International Association (MIA), she was the Mercy Global Action coordinator at the United Nations; she completed a Mercy Grassroots extended global educational experiential assignment on addressing global poverty; and she was assistant to the president for mission at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
A native of Dublin, Ireland—just a few miles from Mercy founder Catherine McAuley’s home on Baggot Street—Áine studied speech and language therapy and applied healing arts, and she holds a doctorate in philosophy from the School of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin. She is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States.
Áine is passionate about bringing the gift of imagination and hope to Mercy apostolic religious life and considers it among her strengths the ability to engage in social critique, root causes and systems analysis, and to do justice and inspire collaborative action to address the needs of our time.
“I have learned that some of the most difficult times of personal loss and grief or experiences of darkness and systemic injustice have allowed my heart to be broken open.”
“These times have clarified and taught me that our justice and advocacy ministry is always exercised as an option for persons and Earth who have been rendered poor. And … I have found that in the darkness, if we hold on in friendship, love, tears, solidarity and outrage, that our most creative power can be unleashed in an instant and often without announcement to direct with life-giving energy and passion our collective transformation, decision-making and action.”
Sister Áine O’Connor, Institute Leadership Team Member