Mercedes

Mercedes, west of Buenos Aires, became the seat of the western Irish chaplaincy. Fr Anthony Fahy placed assistant chaplains there after Chascomús and Dolores, according to Patrick McKenna's 1994 thesis. The 1869 census counted 393 Irish in Mercedes and Suipacha together, and 376 in 1895; Coghlan's records list 142 Irish deaths in Mercedes, the highest figure listed for any partido. A Sisters of Mercy convent was built in 1872 on Calle 12.

The Pallottines arrived in Argentina in July 1885 and were sent to Mercedes. St Patrick's school, the Colegio San Patricio, opened in February 1887, and the first St Patrick's chapel was inaugurated on 17 March 1887, the Irish Argentine Historical Society recorded in 2004. The Pallottines bought the premises in 1890. The present church's cornerstone was laid on 17 October 1930 and it was inaugurated on 17 March 1932; it is now the cathedral of the diocese. The school marked its 130th anniversary on 8 October 2017. At the end of the nineteenth century more than 25 estancias in the district held about half a million sheep, and about 130 Irish family names are recorded locally.

The earliest references to hurling in Argentina date from 1887 to 1888 in Mercedes and near the San Pablo monastery, according to King and Darby; a Saint Patrick's Mercedes team played in the game's heyday. Three of the Pallottines killed in Belgrano in 1976 are buried in Mercedes cemetery, where prayers were said in 2014. Ireland's Emigrant Support Programme paid grants in 2025 to the Sociedad Irlandesa de Mercedes and to a Colegio San Patricio.