Nano Nagle (1718-1784) once asserted that if she could be of any service in any part of the world, she would willingly do all in her power. This is an astonishing statement by a Catholic woman in eighteenth-century Ireland, when opportunities for involvement of Catholic women in public life, at home or abroad, were almost non-existent. Here is what her biographer, William Hutch, writing in 1875, has to say:
“She would spare no efforts in alleviating the temporal wants of her fellow-creatures … Nor was her spirit of charity limited by any consideration of creed or country … It was in purpose and effect cosmopolitan …”