Mother Mary and her nuns had been sent to relive the
mission in the remote place of Jerusalem (New Zealand).
Maori canoes transported the nuns upriver to the mission
that had been abandoned during the Hauhau riots.
She and her sisters were putting themselves in serious
danger by going there but, as well as speaking English,
Spanish, Italian and French fluently, Mother Mary also spoke
perfect Maori and quickly gained the trust of the Maori who
invited her to learn their healing techniques and herbal
remedies.
Combining this knowledge with her European medical
training and working as a nurse in the Crimean War, she
started producing medicines in an herb garden on her
hillside farm.
The main one of the farms botanical medicines
was cannabis.
Mother Mary was the first known person to cultivate
cannabis in New Zealand.
By the 1880s Indian Hemp Resin was a popular drink in
New Zealand, used by doctors, nurses and veterinarians.
The medicines of Mother Mary financed the creation of
the first orphanages, Maori schools and hospitals in the
country. Soon a church was built where the only original
New Zealand Catholic order was founded, the first to accept
Maori sisters, and in two cabins the sisters took care of
people with incurable diseases.
The 1880s and '90s were years of great depression in New
Zealand and there Sister Mary’s community began to pick
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