Mary C. Sullivan rsm has written the first full-length, documented narrative of McAuley in more than fifty years. This work places Catherine in her Irish context, particularly in post-penal Dublin, where the destitution, epidemics, and lack of basic education, especially of poor women and young girls, led her to a life of practical mercifulness.

Using extensive primary sources and questioning aspects of earlier accounts, The Path of Mercy illumines Catherine's personality and details her life. It recounts her efforts, using her inheritance from her foster parents, to address the poverties of Irish people in her time.