page_title: Mother Ignatius Hayes
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Mother Ignatius Hayes / Life / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Mother Ignatius Hayes, F.M.I.C., taken in the Roman studio of G. Cardillie (1889-1894)
context_page_description: Mary Ignatius Hayes, O.S.F., also known as Mother Mary Ignatius of Jesus, was an Anglican religious sister who was later received into the Catholic Church and became a Franciscan sister. Her lifetime of religious service, in the course of which she traveled widely, led to the establishment of three separate religious congregations of Franciscan sisters and the establishment of the Poor Clare nuns in the United States.
context_section_description: She was born Elizabeth Hayes in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. Her father, Philip Hayes, was an Anglican priest from England who was the headmaster of Elizabeth College which prepared boys for matriculation. Her ancestors were very musical and were associated with the work of George Frederick Handel in England. She was the eighth and youngest surviving child of her parents' ten children. Her parents ensured that she received a sound education, was fluent in both French and English and encouraged her love of literature.
  After the deaths of both her parents, in the 1840s Hayes moved to England, where she took employment as a teacher in London and Oxford. There she came under the influence of the Oxford Movement and in 1850 became one of the first members of the Anglican Community of St Mary the Virgin and was given the religious name of Sister Mary Ignatius of Jesus. After being a qualified principal and a leader of her community for some years, she was received into the Catholic Church and joined the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, who lived in Greenwich and later in Bayswater, under the leadership of Mother Elizabeth Lockhart, who were committed to serving the poor of London. In 1858 she received the religious habit from the future cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, but chose to go to Scotland to do her novitiate under the Tertiary Franciscan Sisters of Glasgow, founded in the mid-15th century, who traced their heritage back to Angela of Foligno. She professed her vows on 26 November 1859. In addition to the traditional three religious vows, she made a fourth vow to dedicate her life to the foreign missions. She wrote in her diary at the time, "God calls me to leave my home and country and to join a foreign mission".
caption: Photograph of Mother Ignatius Hayes, F.M.I.C., taken in Rome (1889–1894)
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