News & Views
NUN HONOURED FOR HER WORK WITH CRIMINALS
BY MICHELLE CARNOVALE (Star Local Newspaper, Broadmeadows, Melbourne,
Victoria - 6th Feb, 2007)
Not many people would consider devoting their lives to helping convicted sex offenders, but for Sister Clare Agnes McShee, it was God’s calling. The 74-year-old Dallas nun was acknowledged for her hard work with Victoria’s prisoners by receiving a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) on Australia Day.
Sister Clare was almost speechless when describing how it felt to receive such an honour. “I got a bit of a shock,” she said. “It was hard to believe. I’ve never thought of it at all and I didn’t think that ... well, it was just a big surprise to me.”
“What I’m happy about is I’m part of an organisation, I’m part of a congregation, and this is where I come from, and so it’s an honour to them as well.” Sister Clare is a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood and visits prisoners once a week as part of the Australian Community Support Organisation (ACSO).
Born in Yorkshire, England, Sister Clare entered the convent at the young age of 17, but she didn’t originally want to be a nun. “I wanted to get married and have children,” she said, laughing. When asked why she instead chose a life of prayer, she said: “That’s a question that God can answer.” She worked as a radiographer in her congregation’s hospitals before moving to Australia in 1968.
In the past 20 years she has devoted her time to working with prisoners and ex-convicts to help them lead a better life. “Our aim is to reduce the number of victims, and in helping the offenders we’re hoping this will happen,” she said.
Sister Clare said she believed criminals could be rehabilitated with her help and she generally found people were accepting of her work. “Mostly people just say, ‘I don’t know how you do it’, and that’s fine — they’re just happy that somebody’s trying to do something,” she said.