Gibbons, Geraldine Henrietta (Mary Scholastica) (c.1817–1901), founder and first superior of the Community of the Good Samaritan, was born in Kinsale, Co. Cork, the daughter of Gerald Gibbons, a landowner, and Mary Gibbons (née Sughrue), niece of the bishop of Ferns. She was educated in Cork, and in 1834 emigrated to Sydney with her family. Five Irish Sisters of Charity had established a mission at Parramatta, New South Wales, in 1838, and Geraldine followed her older sister into this congregation. She was professed 16 July 1847, taking the religious name Sister Mary Scholastica. Their father had been unsuccessful in his business in Sydney, so they did not have a dowry, but Archbishop Polding of Sydney, anxious to develop the congregation in his archdiocese, waived this necessity for the Australian sisters. This obligation to Polding later caused conflict between the original Irish sisters and the Australian recruits.
After profession, Gibbons worked with the convent's mission at a female penitentiary in Parramatta. When that convent closed and the sisters amalgamated with their Sydney convent (1848), she established a home for female penitents there. In 1853 she was appointed by Polding to succeed her sister as superior of the congregation. This caused some surprise as Mary Scholastica had only been professed for five years, and many had expected the office to go to the long-serving original Irish sister, Baptist De Lacy. Tensions erupted in the community in 1859 when De Lacy resigned her post as rectress of St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, citing pressure from the archiepiscopal hierarchy to change the congregation's rule from Vincentian to a modified Benedictine one. Her resignation caused public debate in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Freeman's Journal (Sydney) in which Scholastica reluctantly engaged, denying such pressures. De Lacy sought permission to return to Ireland, and was received into the Dublin congregation.
Such friction within the congregation led Polding to establish an Australian congregation, and on 2 February 1857, he requested that Gibbons serve as superior both to her own congregation, and to a new group of women who formed the Community of the Good Shepherd (changed to Good Samaritan c.1866 to avoid confusion with the European congregation). She remained in charge of this new congregation until 6 September 1876, when she returned to the Sisters of Charity, and worked with the poor from their Hobart convent (established 1847). Throughout this time she followed the Sisters of Charity's rule and wore their habit. She remained in Hobart until 1885, but due to her time away, found it difficult to settle, and returned to live with the Good Samaritans at Rosebank convent, Sydney. She died 15 October 1901 aged 85 at Marrickville and was buried in Rookwood cemetery, Sydney. In 1945 her body was reinterred at Rosebank College, Sydney.