Sisters of Mercy
Sisters of Mercy, Angas Street, 1961,
St Aloysius College
Sr Anne Gregory
1932 – 2011
Sr Anne Gregory’s career centred on assisting women in need and was instrumental in establishing Catherine House, a shelter for homeless women.
Anne Gregory enrolled as a first year student at St Aloysius College in 1945. She completed her Intermediate year in 1947. In 1950, Anne entered the Convent of Mercy. Her career as a Sister of Mercy was largely centred on assisting women and their children suffering from the effects of isolation, poverty and sometimes violence and alcoholism.
In late 1975 and during 1976, Sr Anne, with experience not only in teaching but also in community development and social work, was part of a Remote and Isolated Children’s Project. Sr Anne, together with a nurse, was based in Port Augusta and travelled along the East-West railway line as far as Hughes. The two women provided health services and helped the mothers to establish play groups for their small children.
In 1977 Sr Anne became supervisor of the Para District Women’s Shelter and remained in this position until 1983. In 1981, Sr Anne received a Commonwealth Scholarship to research women’s shelters overseas.
Catherine House was founded in 1988 by the Sisters of Mercy to address the need of women experiencing homelessness. Originally supported by the South Australian Housing Trust and City of Adelaide, it opened with twelve rooms for short-term stay accommodation. The women came with a history of mental illness or drug abuse, or of domestic violence or sexual abuse as children. Catherine House opened with Sr Anne Gregory as its administrator. By February of 1989, one hundred and twenty women, aged seventeen to seventy, had passed through Catherine House. Many other women had been turned away due to the lack of space.
In ‘Women on the Move’, Anne McLay quotes Sr Anne Gregory concerning Catherine House and the women it cared for. ‘I have developed’, she claimed, ‘a real love for these women because they have called forth compassion and admiration from me…….I find I am the one who is being transformed, the one who is being taught’.
By Neville Stapleton
St Aloysius College Archivist, 2020
Reference
McLay, A. (1996). Women on the move: Mercy’s Triple Spiral. Sisters of Mercy Adelaide.
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