AIKENHEAD, MARY, Servant of God. - Foundress of the Irish Sisters of Charity, born at Cork (Ireland) on 15 Jan. 1787 of a Catholic mother and an Anglican father who converted on his deathbed; died at Dublin on 22 July 1858. A. converted immediately after her father’s death (1802), and, after her mother’s death, entered a convent at York under the name Mary Augustine. After three years she took her vows and settled in Dublin, where, assisted by Alice Walsh, she opened the first house of the “Sisters of Charity” (1815),
which she governed as superior general; she subsequently founded new convents at Micklegate, at Bar, and at York; at her death she left six of them, besides a home for penitents and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, the first in Ireland directed by sisters.
During the plague of 1832 and on other occasions she devoted herself, together with her sisters, to the care of the sick, one of the principal tasks to which her congregation is dedicated. The process for the beatification of this benefactress of Ireland was introduced on 20 March 1921.