by Florence Boyle

Former Open House contributor, and one of our most loyal supporters, Sister Julia McLoughlin has died. Her funeral took place at the Immaculate Conception church in Maryhill on Wednesday 2nd December, on what would have been Julia’s 90th birthday. She was in religious life for 73 years.

As a Franciscan Sister of the Immaculate Conception, Julia taught and worked in parishes in Nigeria for 20 years. She discerned a further call to the Sisters of Notre Dame and completed study in business and administration. She worked at the Generalate in Rome and in administration at St Buenos in North Wales. She was on the administrative staff at Scotus College in Bearsden, and after teaching in schools in Dumbarton and Glasgow, Julia pioneered industrial chaplaincy, as one the first women appointed in a post created by the Church of England. She worked as chaplain to a power station in England and with construction workers on the Channel Tunnel. She spent two years in Berkley, California, where she studied spirituality, and was involved in forming and leading women’s groups.

She was a well known figure around the Archdiocese and was to be seen at many lectures and seminars. She had a deeply enquiring mind and spirit. Every now and then she would write a letter of support and encouragement for the work of Open House. After the 2019 conference on new directions for the church in Scotland, which she attended, she wrote: ‘I left with a feeling of hope, and I repeat the words of Julian of Norwich - “All shall be well, all manner of things shall be well” for the future church. If St Julie would have been alive she would have been there, for to her the church was to be ever open to the spirit. Julie was a woman of the church’.

We’ll miss you, Julia, and we plan to look at the contribution of religious sisters to the life of the church in a future edition of Open House.