Birth: August 25, 1930
Profession: July 21, 1960
Death: January 11, 2024
Religious of the Sacred Heart Margaret “Margie” Conroy died on January 11, 2024, in Uganda. She was 93 years old and a religious for 72 years. Margie was born on August 25, 1930, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Betty McGrath Conroy and Jim Conroy. She had one older brother, Charlie. When she was nine months old, her father died suddenly, leaving her mother with two small children. Her father and grandfather had worked in partnership as barristers. When her husband died, Margie’s mother was surrounded by much love and support as she began studying law herself, taking her exams in 1933 and replacing her husband in the firm, Conroy, Bradshaw, and Conroy. It was not easy for women to establish themselves professionally; her mother encountered much resistance and for a long time did not get many clients. When she did start receiving clients, she was loved and appreciated by those she helped to create wills, settle land disputes, etc.
Despite her mother’s working, Margie did not feel neglected in the least. She remembered a happy childhood spending summers at Logy Bay swimming with friends and visiting her uncle and aunt who had eleven children. Margie contracted rheumatic fever when she was around eight years old and spent most of the winter in bed. Her temperature would spike when she listened to her favorite radio serial about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Her mother banned the show and, as she brought in books from the public library, Margie developed a love for reading during this time. The following winter, thanks to her grandmother McGrath’s generosity, Margie’s mother took her to Florida to escape the cold. So as not to put a strain on Margie’s heart, her mother used a wheelchair for her, much to her embarrassment. The following winter, when she returned to Florida again, she could run around and play with the other children. She recovered fully from the rheumatic fever without complications.
By the time she was back at school at the Mercy Convent, Margie and her brother spent a lot of time with her grandmother Conroy because her grandmother McGrath was ill, and her mother had to stay with her as well as hold down a job. Her grandmother McGrath could be ill-tempered at times, but she believed in education and had made sure that Margie’s mother and uncle went to university. Her grandmother, who had also been widowed young, was a good businesswoman who ran a hotel. She died after a time, and Margie was sent to boarding school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Sault au Récollet. She loved the school and the nuns and was deeply impressed with their way of life. A school retreat confirmed for Margie a feeling she had had since seventh grade that she was called to religious life.
After the death of her grandmother Conroy, Margie’s mother decided to marry again. Her new marriage brought the two children from her husband’s first marriage (his wife had died the previous year) and a move to Montreal where everyone could be together. The new family gradually grew to be a happy one, in which Margie became very close to her stepfather, John Mennie; and her stepsister Elizabeth became of one her dearest friends. Margie left the Sault and enrolled as a day student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart on Atwater Avenue. Elizabeth and her brother Bill were a year ahead of Margie in school, but she would eventually join them at McGill University where she earned a B.A. in 1951. By the time Margie was in her last year at McGill, she knew she would enter the Society of the Sacred Heart. However, she wanted to prove her independence; and after her exams, not waiting for graduation, she embarked on a solo journey to Europe and experienced different countries, even hitchhiking and staying at youth hostels. After returning home, Margie planned to enter the Society on the Feast of Mater Admirabilis, but a friend of her mother’s persuaded her to wait since she had just arrived home. Margie waited a month and entered the Society on November 16, 1951, leaving by train to Kenwood, calling it the “most desolate day of her life.” She was one of about ninety novices. In 1952, she received the habit and in May of 1954 made her first vows. She then joined the black juniorate for one year.
In 1955, Sister Conroy went to Halifax where she taught the first academic at the Sacred Heart school there. As a new teacher, she had to overcome a fear of teaching, but she came to love it, and the children loved her. During these years as a young professed, she averaged twenty hours a day in the school teaching and supervising a dormitory. In 1960, Sister Conroy left for probation in Rome and made her final profession on July 21, 1960.
Sister Conroy was attracted to the foreign missions early on when she read letters from Uganda. When she inquired about the missions as a novice, as a young professed, and again as a professed, the answer was always the same, “But there are so few Canadian vocations,” implying that she was needed at home. In 1962, she left teaching to study at Oxford University for two years. She graduated in 1966 with an MA in English Language and Literature. Her brother, Charlie, who had been ordained a priest a week after Sister Conroy made her first vows, eventually went to serve in a parish in Peru. In 1966, her brother and two Mercy sisters were killed in an automobile accident. Her mother nearly broke from the loss. Upon return from Oxford, Sister Conroy went to teach in Montreal and then in Halifax until 1970.
In 1970, Sister Conroy asked again to be sent to the missions. Her provincial was considering sending someone else, but Sister Conroy pleaded her case, saying she was older and had been asking to go for a longer time. In 1971 on her 41st birthday, Sister Conroy became a member of the Kalisizo community in Uganda, and for the next fifty years, she served in East Africa. She taught at Christ the King Secondary School in Kalisizo, Uganda (1971-1973), and at Collège du Sacré-Cœur, N’Djaména, Chad (1974-1977). She taught at Sacred Heart Secondary School for Girls, Kalungu, Uganda (1979-1983). In 1979, Sister Conroy recounts in a letter the experience of being completely cut off for forty days when Tanzania invaded Uganda. As the students could not be sent home, they were kept at the school. There was no fuel or electricity and “we had to eat in silence and go to bed in silence, so as not to attract the attention of the soldiers.” The nuns stayed in the dormitories with the girls. “Never have I experienced such a sense of unity and cooperation.”
In 1981, Sister Conroy, along with two other sisters, founded the Sacred Heart community in Kangole, Uganda. From 1981 to 1983, she taught at the Kangole Secondary School for Girls and in 1984, became headmistress of the school. The school is located in northern Uganda where tribal rivalries are common, making educating young women dangerous in a culture in which they are held in low esteem. Despite deprivation, threats, and marauding warriors, Sister Conroy encouraged her students to pursue their education after high school. She wrote about the challenge she found in Kangole: “The girls are certainly among the poorest in the world. The girls we are educating become the teachers and nurses who serve Karamoja. If we can improve and educate them to think for themselves, surely things may change for the better.” Amidst the worry and danger that the students experienced, they were able to enjoy the plays that Sister Conroy would write, which brought out their own creativity. One was a musical version of Snow White called Ebony and the Dwarfs. The students did not want the story to end, even creating an additional scene in the play.
In 1976, Sister Conroy was elected delegate to represent the Uganda-Kenya Province at the General Chapter in Rome; and from 1977 to 1981, she was a member of a three-person provincial team for the province of Uganda-Kenya. In 1990, Sister Conroy was named provincial of the Uganda-Kenya Province.
After a sabbatical in 1998 at the Ecce Homo Biblical College in Jerusalem, she contemplated retirement at the age of 70 but instead returned to the work in Uganda or Kenya for a few more years. From 1999 to 2004, Sister Conroy was a member of the Novitiate Community in Jinja, Uganda, where she taught the young sisters French and history and worked with social action groups. She also taught English at St. Noah’s Secondary School. In 2004, she returned to Moroto, Northern Uganda, near the Kangole Community she had helped to establish in 1981. She served in prison ministry at the Moroto Prison, where she created dramas to demonstrate Christian values to the prisoners. Sister Conroy involved the prisoners in creating and producing the plays. “There is no doubt the plays are good for the prisoners, who are despondent, passive, and bored, but not when there is a play.”
To celebrate her fiftieth anniversary as a religious, Sister Conroy worked to obtain sponsorships for fifty AIDS orphans, which resulted in 120 sponsorships, providing primary and secondary tuition for children including attending a post-secondary institution for two years. Tuition, books, supplies, and lunch were covered.
Beginning in 2003, Sister Conroy became an advocate for refugees, assisting several families to emigrate to and thrive in Canada. In 2010, on a home visit, she visited a Rwandan family, with two children who were attending university.
Sister Conroy’s presence continued to be a vital part of the Province of Uganda/Kenya. It was observed on many occasions that she was sought out for company and counseling by the sisters. For many years, she also served as archivist for the Uganda/Kenya Province.
Sister Margaret Conroy died on January 11, 2024, in Jinja, Uganda, and was buried at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Mbikko Njeru Municipality in the Buikwe District. A former student of Sister Conroy, the Vice President of Uganda, Jessica Alupo, in her eulogy of Sister Conroy, shared “The values of commitment, courage, faith, confidence, and dedication were immeasurable in Sr. Margie’s life. Her relationship with us was that of a true mother.”
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