Founding Sisters

Jane Griffin was born on the 12 May 1827 in Ireland. She and her sister Caroline (Sister M. Joseph) were the daughters of an Irish doctor. Both girls had been well-educated at Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham and became gifted and cultured women.

Jane entered the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin and was professed there, taking the religious name Liguori. She had had some years of nursing and administrative experience in the Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, experience which proved invaluable in Buenos Aires. She was also admired for her magnificent soprano voice of ‘great range, power and sweetness.’

She joined the Sisters in Argentina in October 1856 as part of the second group of pioneers. In 1858, the Sisters were asked by the Government to take charge of the Lazaretto (or Pest House) during a yellow fever epidemic. This building remained in their care, under the leadership of Sister Liguori Griffin until 1859.

Sister Liguori was aged fifty-two when the Sisters arrived in Adelaide. When the group of twenty-four was divided into two groups, she remained in Adelaide, while her younger sister, Sr. M. Joseph, went to Mount Gambier.

Following Mother Evangelista’s death in June 1885, Sister Liguori, who was Evangelista’s Assistant, was elected to the role of Reverend Mother in July 1885 ‘for the time being’. Most of this ‘time being’ – which turned out to be eighteen months – she spent in acute physical suffering. She died on 25 April 1887 aged fifty-eight, and was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, side by side with Evangelista. Both had been worn out by the lengthy period of hard work and heavy responsibility in Ireland, Argentina and Australia.

Her nursing and administration experience in Dublin proved invaluable in Buenos Aires.