Did you know that the first editor of Annals was a Randwick laywoman, Mary Agnes Finn?

With thanks to Margaret Scott, related to the Finn family, for the photo from Brenda Carmody (Finn) niece.

From the Randwick OLSH Parish Bulletin, 2011:

It’s hard to look at the history  of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church Randwick without mentioning the name Finn. For as long as there has been a Catholic Church in Randwick there has been a Finn presence. The Finn family has lived in Randwick since the 1870s, and assisted the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in establishing a parish in Randwick. The first editor  of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was Mary Agnes Finn.

She also wrote the book Memories of Randwick, a historical review of the parish’s first fifty years. One of her nephews, Ken Finn, a former mayor of Randwick, has been a longstanding parishioner of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Ken Finn’s grandmother, Mary, was sponsored into the Catholic Church by St Mary MacKillop, a lifelong friend, and baptised by their mutual friend, Fr Julian Tennyson-Woods.

Two of Mary’s grand-nephews became MSC priests – Fathers Don and Doug Smith. Kathleen, another early Finn, helped the Brown Nurses to start their mission in Coogee in 1913 and inaugurated their annual Christmas Appeal and Fete.

John McMahon MSC wrote:

_{The first issue of Annals appeared in December 1889. The driving forced behind it was a pioneer Missionary of the Sacred Heart, Emile Merg, who came to Sydney in 1887 and was appointed as curate to Randwick Parish until he left in 1909. Being a French-speaking priest he depended very heavily on a gifted volunteer trained teacher in the parish school at Randwick named Mary Agnes Finn. It was Miss Finn who translated into English much of the early material in Annals and who wrote many a short story and the longer serial stories for so many years to come. Her brothers were also well-known commercial printers in the city of Sydney and became before long the early printers of Annals.}

_{When Pierre Treand became Superior of Randwick and Provincial of the MSC in Australia, he took over Annals and he too was very dependent on Mary Agnes Finn as well as on a rising younger Catholic journalist, Miss Agatha le Breton, also a teacher, who wrote under the pen-name "Miriam Agatha". These two dedicated and gifted ladies did most of the writing for Annals and were something more than mere contributors. Were it not such an ugly word I should be inclined to refer to them as "editresses".}

And, Paul Stenhouse in his final article for Annals, its final issue, November-December 2019, wrote: 

The first editor of the Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was, surprisingly for the time, a woman.

Mary Agnes Finn, a devout member of an old-established Randwick Catholic family, was assisted by Fr. Emile Merg, MSC, an Alsatian priest whose English at the time was poor and who was, on paper, responsible for the editing and production of the infant magazine.

Because of attitudes prevailing at the time, Mary Agnes Finn was never given the recognition that was her due. Her role as editor was never publicised, and apart from the regular pieces carrying her by-line, she worked in relative obscurity. Yet her role was crucial.