Elizabeth Flanagan was born in Ireland on 17 August, 1827 and after her vows of profession, took the Religious Name of Catherine. She travelled to Argentina with the first founding group from Baggot Street Convent in 1856. She was one of the four Professed Sisters in the group, along with Reverend Mother Evangelista Fitzpatrick, Mother Baptist MacDonnell and Sister Angela Rowland. She was aged 52 years of age when she arrived in Adelaide in 1880.
Anne McLay in her book “Women on the Move” has two references to Mother Catherine Flanagan.
‘… it was on the 14th May [1880] that 12 of the 24 foundresses together with Mother Evangelista and Sister Catherine, passed in silent procession down King William Street ‘to the amazement of the Adelaidians, who were however, too polite to stare’. At the railway station, they caught the train to the Port. There they took a small steamer, SS Coorong, bound for the south, and landed at Beachport, where they had the experience of being shifted from boat to beach in a tub. It was pitch dark, and the landing and walk along a very narrow jetty made them feel nervous. They spent the rest of the night in a hotel. After breakfast, wrote one of them, the Argentines longed to try what walking up a hill was like, never having mounted one in their lives. Some soon tired, but found even greater difficulty in coming down.’
In 1890, ‘When Mother Antonia became superior of Goodwood orphanage, her place as Bursar was taken by Mother Catherine Flanagan. Catherine was a Dubliner. . . She had volunteered for the Crimean War service but had been thought too young, to her very great disappointment. In Adelaide, she was in charge of St Anthony’s Boys School for some years, and was sacristan and music teacher at other times in her life. In a large portrait which survives, she looks a quiet, unassuming person, as steady as her long life as a Sister of Mercy in three countries undoubtedly was. When she died on 29 November, 1911, aged 84 years, the school magazine spoke of her ‘utter unselfishness, deep humility, warm Irish nature, and sympathy to the poor and sick’.
Mother Catherine Flanagan is buried at West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.
By Sr Mary-Anne Duigan and edited by Jacqui Jury, 2024
References
(ed.) 1996, Women on the move: Mercy’s Triple Spiral, Sisters of Mercy, Adelaide.