Mary MacKillop
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Blessed Mary MacKillop (15 January 1842 - 8 August 1909) was an Australian Roman Catholic nun who, together with Father J.T. Woods, founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Since her death she has attracted much veneration within Australia as a symbol of the strength of the early Catholic Church, and as such is the only Australian to be beatified, with many Australians awaiting her canonisation as a saint.
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[edit] Early life
Mary MacKillop was born to Alexander and Flora MacKillop in Fitzroy, Melbourne on Saturday 15 January 1842. Her parents came from the Roman Catholic area located around the village of Roy Bridge, near Fort William in north-west Scotland. The eldest of seven children, she was well educated at the insistence of her father who himself spent a few years studying for the priesthood in Rome before bad health. Alexander migrated from his native country of Scotland, to Australia, with his father, in 1835. Alexander lacked financial skills and the family was often destitute, living without a home and relying on other wealthier members of the family.
At the age of 16, Mary earned her living as a governess and substantially helped support her family. She spent a brief time as a teacher in Portland, Victoria before moving to Penola, South Australia to act as governess to the children of Alexander Cameron, her uncle by marriage. She was already concerned with helping the poor and taught other needy local children with the Camerons. It was about this time that she decided that she would like to become a nun. Through these actions, she met Father Julian Tenison Woods, the local Catholic priest, who needed help in the religious education of children in his large parish. At the time, her family still relied on her financial support so she was unable to take up the offer.
After working for the Camerons for two years, she moved back to Portland to take up another teaching job and opened her own boarding school, Bayview House. This enabled the financial security her family needed and they joined her in Portland.
While teaching in Portland, Father Woods asked Mary and her two sisters, Annie and Lexie, to come to Penola and start a Catholic school. In 1866, Mary opened the first St Joseph's School in a disused stable in Penola under the guidance of Father Woods, teaching around 50 children.
St Joseph's School was the first free Catholic school in Australia. At that time, only the rich could afford schooling. At Mary's school, pupils were accepted whether their parents could afford to pay or not.
[edit] Legacy
Although she still felt a religious calling to become a nun, she was unable to find an order that suited her, so she and Father Woods started their own. In 1867, Mary became the first Sister, and Mother Superior, of the newly-formed Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. They believed that God would provide and the Sisters would go wherever they were needed. The rules were approved by Bishop Sheil. By the end of 1867 ten other Sisters had joined the Josephites.
She was asked by Bishop Shiel to come to Adelaide to start a school there and she moved to the new Grote Street convent in 1867. In 1869 she and some of the Josephite sisters arrived in Brisbane. They were based at Kangaroo Point and took the ferry or rowed across the Brisbane River to attend Mass at old St Stephen's Cathedral. She left Brisbane in 1871. By the end of 1869 more than seventy Sisters were educating children at twenty-one schools in Adelaide and the country. Mary and her Josephites were also involved with an orphanage, neglected children, girls in danger, the aged poor and, in Kapunda, South Australia, a reformatory, and a home for the aged and incurably ill. Generally, the Sisters were prepared to follow farmers, railway workers and miners into the isolated outback and live as they lived. They shared the same hardships whilst educating their children.
In 1873 St Joseph's School and St Patrick's Convent were opened by the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Townsville, Queensland. St Joseph's "The Strand" is the oldest Catholic school in Townsville. The Sisters also provided a home for orphans. In 1877 St Patrick's Convent was extended to provide accommodation for boarders to St Joseph's. The Sisters of Mercy took over St Patrick's Convent in 1879.
[edit] Excommunication
In 1871, Mary was wrongly excommunicated by Bishop Sheil, who was against most of the changes for which she had fought. She was censured on the grounds that she had incited the sisters to disobedience and defiance in her school. Bishop Sheil had also complained that they sang excessively. Following her excommunication, she travelled to Rome, explained her predicament to the Pope and was reinstated in St Ignatius Church in 1872. Despite her ordeal she never publicly blamed the church leaders for their actions.
[edit] Josephites expand
The Sisters spread, in groups,to small outback settlements and large cities around Australia. By 1877 they operated more than forty schools in and around Adelaide, with many others in Queensland and New South Wales. Today there are schools in New Zealand, Peru and Brazil and the order have administered education and aid at refugee camps in Uganda and Thailand. Mary and these early Sisters, together with other Religious Orders and lay teachers of the time, had a profound influence on the forming of Catholic Education as it is today. Mary also opened orphanages and providences to care for the homeless and destitute both young and old, and refuges for ex-prisoners and ex-prostitutes who wished to make a fresh start in life.
[edit] Death
Throughout her life Mary suffered ill health. She suffered from rheumatism and after a stroke in New Zealand in 1902, became paralysed on her right side. For seven years she had to rely on a wheelchair to move around but her speech and mind were as good as ever. She died on the 8 August 1909 in the convent in Mount Street, North Sydney.
After her burial, people continually took earth from around her grave and as a result her remains were transferred, on 27 January 1914, to a vault before the altar of the Mother of God in the Memorial Chapel in Mount Street, North Sydney, otherwise known as Mary MacKillop Place.
[edit] Beatification
The conviction that she was a saint grew stronger with the years, but Australia had no experience of how to go about having someone canonized. Eventually in 1925 the Mother General of the congregation, Mother Laurence, was encouraged by the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Cattaneo, to take the necessary initiative.
Due to countless technical difficulties, it took until 1993 to prove that Mary had been responsible for a miracle.
His Holiness Pope John Paul II formally beatified Mary MacKillop on 19 January 1995 at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney.
To be canonized, the postulator of the cause must now prove the existence of a second miracle.
For the occasion of the Beatification, acclaimed Croatian Australian artist Charles Billich was commissioned to do the Official Commemorative Portrait of Mary MacKillop.[1]
[edit] Other information
In 2001, a Callistemon shrub was released in Australia to honour Mary MacKillop and friends [2]
A number of schools across Australia, several with links to the Josephites, have been named in honour of Mary MacKillop .
Mary MacKillop is the patron of Penola Catholic College in Broadmeadows, Victoria.
[edit] References
Saint Stephen's Chapel (n.d.). Unpublished guide notes. Brisbane: Author.
