{"id":516040,"date":"2026-06-24T12:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/516040\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T12:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:26:10","slug":"tributes-after-death-of-108-year-old-cork-nun-sr-colette-hickey-who-was-irelands-oldest-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/516040\/","title":{"rendered":"Tributes after death of 108-year-old Cork nun Sr Colette Hickey, who was Ireland’s oldest woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tributes have been paid to Cork nun Sister Colette Hickey<\/a>, who has passed away at the age of 108, just weeks after becoming Ireland\u2019s oldest living person.<\/p>\n

Sr Colette joined the Good Shepherd Sisters over 90 years ago at the age of 17, and founded Edel House in 1972<\/a>, an organisation which provides emergency accommodation for women and children.<\/p>\n

She was named the very first Cork Person of the Year in 1993, and given an award presented by then taoiseach Albert Reynolds.<\/p>\n

Cork Person of the Year Award organiser Manus O\u2019Callaghan said: \u201cShe\u2019s been a great friend to me since then, because we were walking out of the hotel and I said to her if you ever need any help, let me know. The next morning she rang me, and I ended up sitting on the Edel House committee for the next 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe used to say God must have forgotten her, because he hadn\u2019t called her home. I\u2019d say to her,\u00a0‘There\u2019s enough saints in heaven, that\u2019s why he left you down here.’<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a strong woman, and a lovely person, very down to earth. She lived a good life \u2014 it\u2019s a very sad day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\" Sr Colette Hickey, meeting then lord mayor Tony Fitzgerand and his wife Georgina on Sr Colette’s 100th birthday at her home in Baile an Aoire, Montenotte, Cork. File picture: Jim Coughlan<\/p>\n

Sr Jane Murphy, mission leader of Good Shepherd Cork, said Sr Colette created a strong legacy in Cork.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was deeply loved and respected by everybody. She was kind, hardworking, and practical. And a prayerful woman, right up to the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose of us that knew her will remember her for being such a kind, practical woman of vision really.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is happy to go home to the Lord. But we are also very sad because she was such a part of all our lives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cHer mind was so clear right up to the end, just crystal clear. She is a county Waterford woman and she always would say that. But she saw her life in Cork.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with the staff in the care home, they all loved her because she was just so easy to care for, even in her last days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sr Jane added that one of the many positive traits of Sr Colette was her ability to always care for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven since it became public there that she was the oldest woman in Ireland, there have been some of the past women that she would have been caring for in early years in Edel House, they\u2019ve even been in touch in the last couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a visionary who planted the seed that blossomed into what we now know as Good Shepherd Cork over 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a big provider for homeless women, children, and families in Cork city and in the county as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all started with Sr Colette, a very small seed all those years ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SrSr Colette Hickey at her 100th birthday celebration at her home in Baile an Aoire, Montenotte, Cork, in 2018 with Georgina and Tony Fitzgerald and, back row: Sr Jane Murphy, Sr Brid Mullins, Sr Shirley O\u2019Sullivan, Sr Una O\u2019Dwyer, Sr Cecilia Taylor, Sr Marie Jo Crean, Sr Evelyn Graney, and Sr Gertrude Tangney. File picture: Jim Coughlan<\/p>\n

Sr Colette joined the Good Shepherd Sisters in Limerick in September 1935, aged 17, and was received into the congregation and given the religious name Colette a year later.<\/p>\n

She made first profession in July 1938 and was appointed to the community in Sunday\u2019s Well in Cork, where she worked in the bakehouse and kitchen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tributes have been paid to Cork nun Sister Colette Hickey, who has passed away at the age of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12780,79,61,60,43,12785],"class_list":["post-516040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-catholic-church","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}