Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball

Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball (born in Dublin 9 January 1794; died 19 May 1861) was the foundress of the Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM).

Frances Ball was born 9 January 1794 in Dublin, Ireland to John and Mable Clare Bennet Ball; the youngest of six children. Her father was a wealthy silk weaver. Catholicism was still suppressed in Ireland at this time. She was therefore sent to England at the age of nine to the Bar Convent in York, which was an IBVM school, although Mary Ward was not acknowledged as the foundress. This sisterhood, which had long existed at York, was originally established on the continent in the seventeenth century by Mary Ward to supply the means of a sound religious and secular education to young ladies. Henry James Coleridge describes her as "a bright, quiet, high spirited girl, fond of fun, and with much depth of character." In these times students did not return home for Easter, Christmas or summer holidays. They stayed at the school, and lived like religious people, until they left school, usually in their late teens.

In 1807, her eldest sister, Cecilia was professed at the Ursuline convent in Cork. Frances travelled from Dublin to Cork for the ceremony, where she met Mary Aikenhead. Cecilia Ball took the name of Sister Francis Regis and was within a few years made Superior of the convent in Cork. Upon the death of her father in 1808, Frances returned to Dublin. Frances was expected to make an admirable wife for the son and heir of some rich Catholic Dublin merchant family.

In June 1814, under the direction of Dr. Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, Frances returned to York and entered the novitiate of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There she received her religious training, and made her profession in September 1816, taking, in religion, the name of Mary Teresa.

Recalled by Archbishop Murray, she returned to Dublin with two novices, in 1821, to establish the Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the instruction of children. They stayed with the Mary Aikenhead and the Irish Sisters of Charity in Stanhope Street while Rathfarnam House was being renovated. In 1822 she opened the first institution of the order in Ireland, in Rathfarnam House, four miles from Dublin. Mother Teresa decided to call the house ’Loreto’ after the village in Italy to which the Nazareth house of the Holy Family was said to have been miraculously transported.

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