Due to flooding and lost crops, the years 1879 and 1880 were particularly difficult, with famine adding to political tensions.
[2] As a young woman, Lynch attended a convent school run by the Sisters of Mercy in nearby Ballyjamesduff.
[1] She was joined by three other Blue Sisters; they were responding to the invitation of Archbishop Pietro Pace for skilled nurses to care for the ill. Lynch was appointed superior of the new convent.
Potter asked Lynch to serve a six-month stint as visitor-general for the Australian congregation of the Little Company of Mary.
A small group of sisters, under the leadership of Mother Mary Rafael Farrar, had arrived Sydney in 1885, accompanying Cardinal Patrick Moran, who was returning from a trip to Rome.
The facility served women and children in its early years, but in 1912 it began admitting male patients.
In November 1899, upon the request of community leaders in North Adelaide, Lynch agreed to send sisters to manage the hospital there, which was in debt and in need of skilled nurses.
[1] On 18 September 1927, Archbishop Michael Kelly officiated at the opening of the Maternal Heart Chapel in Lewisham Hospital.
[11] Lynch retired due to ill health in 1929[4] and lived her last years at the sisters' home in Wollongong.
[20] Upon her death, her body was brought to the Chapel of the Maternal Heart at Lewisham Hospital, where it was received by a choir of nuns and members of the clergy, including Thomas O'Shea, the Archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, and Giovanni Panico, the apostolic delegate.
In his remarks, he observed that "Australia is indebted to her more than any other for the growth and expansion of that great home of the healing known as Lewisham.
[20] After the Mass, a large funeral procession made its way to Rookwood Cemetery, where Lynch was buried with Catholic rites.