Founding Sisters

Sr Raphael Connaughton was born in Argentina on 15 December 1845. She was thirty-four when the Sisters came to Australia. She was one of the twelve who remained in Adelaide when the community was divided.

There is little known about Sr Raphael during her time at Angas Street. One surviving story highlights the unfortunate consequences of the limited play space available to students and the proximity of the upstairs nuns’ chapel to the tennis court. On one occasion, a student accidentally struck a tennis ball through the open sacristy window. The following morning, in class, Sister Raphael, the sacristan, wagged a stern finger and warned that such an incident was not to be repeated.

She died on 23 December 1917, aged seventy-two and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery in Adelaide.