The Dempsey Medal is awarded annually by the Archbishop of Sydney to members of the Catholic clergy and laity. This Honour is named in recognition of a lay Catholic pioneer from Sydney’s early European settlement. James Dempsey was transported to Sydney in 1802 for his involvement in the Vinegar Hill rebellion in Co. Wexford. The home of this Carmelite tertiary was used to preserve the Blessed Sacrament and became a gathering place for Catholics with recitations of the Rosary each weekday and Vespers on Sundays during the period when the colony was without priests for almost a decade from 1810. Dempsey was an Irish stonemason who oversaw the ...