The niece of a ‘joyful troublemaker’ Bermondsey nun has written a bestselling album about her beloved aunt who worked for decades with local children and some from tough backgrounds.
Maria Dunn’s Joyful Banner Blazing was named traditional roots album of the Year in Canada’s Juno Awards, the country’s equivalent of the Grammys.
Maria dedicated the album and its title song to her aunt, Sister Cecily Dunn, who established the Bosco Centre on Jamaica Road and worked there for more than 30 years, before dying in 2016.
She was nicknamed the ‘flying nun’ because she used to get around on a moped, while still wearing her nun’s habit.
Scottish-born Sister Cecily, who was part of the Salesian Sisters, a Catholic order following the altruistic principles of nineteenth-century priest St. Don Bosco, worked with deprived young people at the centre, which is a convent with a nursery and youth club attached as well as a school and college.
Maria said she wrote Joyful Banner Blazing as a tribute to Sister Cecily “and her message to the youth she worked with… which was ‘You are young, you are precious, you are loved’.”
Sister Cecily first joined the Salesian Sisters in the 1970s in Paislie, a town just outside Glasgow. She taught English at the local high school and set up an after school club. In the summer holidays she took groups of young people up to the Scottish Highlands on camping trips.
In the 1980s she was transferred to Liverpool where she was determined to tackle the city’s youth drug problem – but she only stayed a year after receiving threats from gang leaders. She left for London overnight, turning up with just a bag of her possessions.
She set up the Bosco Centre, where she would remain until she died of cancer in 2016, just three weeks after her diagnosis.
Maria, who was also born in Scotland before moving with her parents to Canada as a child, paid tribute to Sister Cecily, and recalled that she “was described as a ‘joyful troublemaker’.
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“She would ride around on her scooter, going into businesses and pubs to cajole people into supporting the youth programmes that she was so passionate about and working to build in their communities.
“Her life’s work was spent empowering youth and their families, and the longest spell she had in one place was later when serving in the Bermondsey area.”
When she died, people paid tribute to a remarkable woman.
“She always worked with deprived children,” one said. “She even took in three and looked after them herself, after their mum died.
“Sister Cecily was definitely not a ‘typical’ nun, according to her colleagues and friends. When she first came to London she used to whizz around on a moped, when she still wore a nun’s habit – it was quite a sight.”
Much-loved Sister Cecily of the Bosco Centre passes away in Bermondsey
Her fellow nun Sister Norma recalled a perilous incident when she was in the post office on Jamaica Road.
“Some men walked in wearing balaclavas, carrying sawn-off shotguns. They told everyone to get on the floor, but she refused so one of them pointed a gun at her chest. She calmly pushed it away, saying ‘Excuse me”, and looked straight into the man’s eyes – and he walked right out.”
Maria Dunn will be in the UK for a string of tour dates in September. These include an appearance at Islington Folk Club on September 29. For more information click here.
