Maura O'Donohoe, who has died aged 82, was a missionary nun and medical doctor who spent much her life ministering in Africa.
There she confronted the Vatican with evidence that at the height of the HIV-Aids epidemic some priests were demanding sex from nuns for fear of being infected by other women.
Her journey to caring for and standing up for the oppressed – no matter who was doing the oppressing – began in 1949, at school in Mountmellick, Co Laois. There she saw a documentary film called Visitation about the work of the Medical Missionaries of Mary in Nigeria.
This prompted her to join the order, thinking she would train as a nurse. But her grades were so good that the order enrolled her in the medical school at University College Dublin and in 1957 she went to Nigeria as a missionary and doctor.
Transferred to Ethiopia in 1974, she worked with lepers. The country was unsettled and in 1975 radical students assigned to her hospital insisted on weekly interrogations of the medical director, lasting up to five hours. Eventually the nuns had to flee under cover of darkness. Later the government removed the students and the hospital's work continued.
Famine relief
Maura O’Donohoe went on to co-ordinate the National Famine Relief Programme of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, working closely with the Orthodox and Protestant churches. In 1988, she joined
Cafod
, the Catholic international relief agency, spearheading the fight against HIV-Aids and promoting the view that HIV was a development issue requiring an urgent response.
Religious congregations pleaded with her to tackle the sexual abuse of young nuns by priests, who saw them as a source of “safe sex” when other women were infected.
She documented this in a report to the Vatican on responses to HIV-Aids in 23 countries. That report appeared to be merely gathering dust until was leaked to a Catholic newspaper. O’Donohoe received hate mail for her trouble but in the end her stand was vindicated. She was, her co-worker Matthew Carter said, a “wise, gentle, eloquent and persuasive medical doctor”.
Later emergency relief work took her to Chechnya, under siege at the time, and Iraq, where she used a motorcycle to reach patients in remote areas.
From 1997 to 1999 she was director of programming with the New York-based Catholic Medical Mission Board before returning to Cafod. More recently, she worked with the National Board for Safeguarding Children in Ireland.
County honour
Maura O’Donohoe was named Clare Person of the Year in 2011. Home was near Kilfenora, where she was brought up on a small farm, the third child of four.
She took a great interest in her extended family and in knowing in detail the lives of her 17 nieces and nephews, 32 grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and two great grand-nephews.
When she was diagnosed with leukaemia last year, she was delighted to be visited by younger members of her family, who came home from the USA and other faraway places to see her one more time.
She is survived by her sister Anne Neligan, and her brothers Jimmy and Paddy O’Donohoe.