Mary MacKillop - Australia's Own Saint

Mary MacKillop was born in Melbourne in 1842 the eldest of seven children to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Her father trained for priesthood in Rome but left before being ordained. He arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1838 and married Flora in 1840. He was unable to settle to anything and although he was a loving father wasn't able to keep the family farm and ended up leaving the family and returning to Scotland. Mary would become one of the main providers for the family starting work as a clerk at the age of fourteen. Later she would become a teacher and then a governess to the children of her aunt and uncle as well as those of the other farm families. This post had taken her to South Australia. It was here that she first cam into contact with Father Julian Woods with whom she would become close friends.

Mary Mackillop: Touching Our Lives

Father Woods greatest concern was the serious lack of education for the children of South Australia. He started a school and with Mary, founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph who would teach in his schools. The Sisters adopted a life of frugality, renouncing worldly possessions and accepting the will to travel to wherever they were needed. This was the first religious order to be founded by an Australian. Two years later she was excommunicated by the very Bishop who had approved the rules for the order in the first place on the grounds that Mary was inciting disobedience and defiance among the sisters. Three years later and just before his death Bishop Sheil ordered the censure be lifted from Sister Mary. By 1877 the order had increased to forty schools in the Adelaide area with more throughout Eastern Australia.

Mary devoted her life to educating the children of the poor. She died in August 1909

She was Beatified by Pope John Paul II on 19 January 1995

Charles Billich was commissioned to do the Official Commemorative Portrait of Mary MacKillop for the occasion of the Beatification.

To be accepted as a Saint, the nominated person must have attributed to them two miracles which can be verified by the Vatican.

This excerpt from The Herald Sun details the process by which Mary MacKillop has attained and been recognized as a Saint.

"In 1993 the Vatican accepted Mary MacKillop was responsible for miraculously curing a woman who had leukaemia in 1961.

Despite doctors giving her no hope, the woman fell pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy after praying for Mother Mary's intercession.

She then had another five children over the next decade.

"The whole thing was medically surprising," a Catholic priest remarked.

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On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Mother Mary's second miracle, paving the way for her to become Australia's first saint.

The approved miracle involved the healing of a NSW Hunter Valley woman with inoperable lung cancer during the mid 1990s.

Given just a few months to live, she asked the Sisters of Joseph, which Mother Mary founded, to pray for her, and was given a relic of Mother Mary's to wear.

Against all odds she not only recovered but all traces of the cancer disappeared.

"I feel personally humbled and grateful to Mary MacKillop, and the influence she has had on my life," the woman, who does not want her identity made known at this stage, said in a statement read by Sr Anne Derwin at Mary MacKillop Chapel in North Sydney.

"On a day like today, you might have a thousand questions to ask about my story, and sometime in the future, I do want to share that with you."

The woman added Mother Mary had always provided her with hope and inspiration.

"I hope this news today provides others, especially younger Australians, with inspiration and encouragement to live as generously and as compassionately as Mary did."

She will be known as "Mother Mary Of The Cross"