Founding Sisters

Mary Maloney was born in Athy, Ireland on 20 July 1838 and was professed on 2 October 1859 taking the religious name of Martha. As a young postulant she travelled from Ireland to Argentina in October of the foundation year of 1856. She was aged forty-one when she arrived in Adelaide in 1880.  

Sister Martha Maloney worked in both the convent and the boarding school. Together with other lay nuns, Margaret Coffey and Lucy Le Couteur, she is remembered as a lay sister who had a deep impact on the girls in the boarding school, with one past pupil declaring that ‘You got your love from the lay nuns.’ Sister Martha had a lifelong friendship with Sister Margaret Coffey and in old age, both these young postulants of 1856 became revered original foundresses. 

Sister Martha Maloney died on 4 February 1917 and is buried in the second heritage grave at the West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.