Foundation Day 2025

6 Oct 2025

On Foundation Day, we pause to honour our beginnings, reflect on the journey that has brought us here, and recognise the vital role our caregivers play in providing compassionate, committed and connected care to the communities we serve.

The journey that shaped St John of God Health Care

Our story starts in Wexford, Ireland, on 7 October 1871 when a group of women chose a life of faith, courage and service as the first Sisters of St John of God. This is the date we acknowledge as Foundation Day.

Just over 20 years later, eight Sisters of St John of God came to Western Australia, leaving behind everything familiar in answering the call of Bishop Matthew Gibney to provide much needed nursing care during Western Australia’s gold rush. This year marks 130 years since those first Sisters arrived in Perth.

The Sisters immediately set about doing what they could, providing home nursing in Perth and nursing from tents on the Goldfields, before the establishment of more permanent hospitals in Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie and Subiaco. They brought dignity, healing and hope to those they cared for.

Within a few decades, the Sisters expanded their ministries across Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, establishing hospitals, schools and other services. In 1989, the Sisters established St John of God Health Care to ensure a future for the health care ministry.

It was at this time they made a deliberate decision to broaden Foundation Day, extending its celebration from the Sister’s community to the wider St John of God Health Care hospitals. Along with the identification of core Values, this was one way in which the Sisters hoped to ensure current and future caregivers would continue to provide care in the ‘St John of God’ way.

Carrying their spirit forward

Since 1989, we have grown to become one of the region’s largest Catholic health care providers, with 16,500 caregivers across 26 hospitals and services in Australia and New Zealand, caring for more than 400,000 people each year.

This year’s Foundation Day theme: ‘With healing at our heart, together as one,’ reminds us of the strength we find in unity. 

As St Paul wrote, “There are many parts, yet one body” (1 Corinthians 12:20). Hundreds of Sisters of St John of God in Australia shaped the hospitals that came together to form St John of God Health Care in 1989 and significantly influenced the organisation’s foundational years. Today, each of us plays an important part in carrying the Mission forward. 

Together, we make it possible.

The Sister’s way of caring continues to shape us, reminding us that every moment matters — often in quiet, unseen acts of care that make all the difference alongside courageous decisions that determine our path into the future.