Mary John Baptist De Lacy

Mary John Baptist De Lacy RSC (born Alicia De Lacy; 1 July 1799 – 12 December 1878) was an Irish Sister of Charity, and one of the first religious sisters to come to the British colony of Australia. She was one of five Religious Sisters of Charity who arrived in Sydney from Ireland in 1838 to serve poor women convicts. She founded and managed the St. Vincent Hospital in Woolloomooloo. She lived in Australia until 1859, when she returned to Ireland, spending her final years in the Sisters of Charity Mother House in Dublin.

Early life Alicia De Lacy was born on 1 July 1799, in Limerick, Ireland. At age 35, she joined the religious life. She became a novice with the Sisters of Charity at their convent in Dublin on 24 September 1835, and professed her final vows on 25 September 1837. The Congregation of the Sisters of Charity are an order founded by Mary Aikenhead in Dublin in 1815. It was the first unenclosed order for women in Ireland; this meant that the women did not need to stay in a cloister but could minister in the community. Mother Aikenhead wanted the sisters to serve the needs of the poor.

De Lacy took on the religious name Mary John Baptist when she entered the order, and was known as Sister Baptist. She trained as a nurse at the new St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, which Mother Aikenhead had opened in 1834. This was the first hospital staffed by religious women in the English-speaking world. The Sisters accepted patients of all faiths. This openness was unusual, as there were long-standing tensions in Ireland between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Australia The first Catholic bishop of New South Wales, Australia, John Bede Polding, reached out to Mary Aikenhead in 1836, while he was on a trip to England, and asked if some of the Sisters of Charity might come to Australia to establish a congregation in his diocese. He wanted help in providing services to the poor women convicts who were being sent to the penal colony. Aikenhead asked for volunteers to take on this mission work.

When De Lacy joined the order, she expressed her interest in traveling to Australia, and participating in the establishment of the new congregation. Three other Sisters volunteered: Mother John Cahill, who became the superior of the congregation; F. De Salca O'Brien, Lawrence Cator. Xavier Williams, who was a novice at the time, also volunteered to go. They arrived in Sydney on 31 December 1838. They were the first religious sisters to arrive in Australia.

Not long after their arrival, the sisters established a convent in Parramatta, where there was a "female factory" where convict women worked. The sisters lived in austerity; they were dependent on dispensations of money from Bishop Polding, who controlled the funds sent from Ireland to support the convent. Charitable donations from neighbors and supporters also helped support the work of the Sisters.

De Lacy was one of the Sisters involved in establishing the first orphanage run by the order, the Catholic Orphan School, located in Waverly, New South Wales. She worked at the orphanage from 1839 to 1840 and then returned to the convent in Parramatta. Along with other sisters, she ministered to prisoners in the Darlinghurst Gaol. She took notes based on her visitations with the convicts; these original records have been preserved, and offer a valuable window into the events and conditions of the time. At that time, hospitals did not employ chaplains, but depended on local clergy to visit patients. The removal was met with an outcry, and the books were returned, after an appeal was made to Archbishop Polding. Her departure was met with distress by many lay Catholics who appreciated her work at the hospital. Archbishop Polding tried to force her to return from Ireland, but was not successful.

De Lacy House at St. Vincent's College at Potts Point is named after her.

De Lacy House at St. Columba College in South Australia is also named after her.

De Lacy Place in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm was named in her honour.