Clare native and 94-year-old nun receives official award for her lifelong work

AN HONOUR has been given to one 94-year-old Clare native, who worked with child victims of drugs and set up a rehabilitation hospital in Egypt.

Sr Catherine Lillis, a Kilkee native who worked as a Columban nun and began her missionary life in Burma, now Myanmar, has been honoured at an official ceremony.

Founder and currently a director of Tabor House addiction treatment centre in Navan, Sr Lillis was awarded with the seventh Oireachtas Human Dignity Award from the Ceann Comhairle, Seán Ó Fearghaíl.

This Thursday, Sr Lillis went to Leinster House to receive her award at the request of the Oireachtas Life and Dignity Group.

Originally from Clare, Sr Lillis joined the Columban Sisters, where she directed the Columbans’ medical clinic in the town of Manbaw. 

After the military took over in Myanmar, she worked at a Columban TB hospital in Hong Kong. She later established a rehabilitation hospital in Egypt for soldiers paralysed in the conflict with Israel.

Sr Lillis later trained as an addiction counsellor in the US during the 1970s. In the 1980s, she worked in Dublin’s Saint Teresa’s Gardens for the Health Board and in Navan as a volunteer counsellor.

This weekend work led her to establish Tabor House in Navan. There was a fundraiser in support of Tabor House, to help raise funds for a dedicated women’s facility at the centre.