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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-14 Daily Xml
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MARY MACKILLOP

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood) (15:54): On 17 October this year, Australia will have its very first saint. Mary Helen MacKillop, who was born on 15 January 1842 and died on 8 August 1909, was an Australian Roman Catholic nun who, together with Father Julian Tenison Woods, founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart.

In 1995 Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Mary MacKillop and this Sunday Pope Benedict will formally recognise the lifetime's work of the blessed Mary MacKillop with her canonisation into sainthood. This will be a momentous occasion that will finally give the tireless work of a woman from South Australia the recognition she has long deserved.

The beliefs and work of the blessed Mary MacKillop were truly selfless and in many respects showed amazing foresight. Her pioneering outlook on providing welfare and her quest for universal education are an inspiration to all. I am sure the member for MacKillop has claimed her as one of his very own from Penola, but today I would like to inform the house of her long association with the people of Kensington and Norwood; in fact, Sister Mary MacKillop lived in Norwood for 11 years. First, however, I will give you some background.

Sister Mary began her working life as a clerk and a schoolteacher. She then became a family governess and established the Bayview House School for Young Ladies in Portland, Victoria in 1864. However it was the teachings of Father Julian Tenison Woods that ultimately inspired her to work for those less fortunate. Father Woods' doctrine was a message of tolerance and selflessness. He believed that the church should observe and work with the same standards of austerity as those whom they were striving to help.

In 1866, Mary went to Penola in the South-East and, together with Father Tenison Woods, established a school for more than 50 local students. In the same year, at age 25, she adopted the religious name Sister Mary of the Cross. In 1867, Mary MacKillop became the first sister and mother superior of the newly formed order, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, and moved to the new convent in Grote Street, Adelaide. There they founded a new school at the request of the Bishop of Adelaide, Bishop Laurence Shiel. Dedicated to the education of children of the poor, it was the first religious order to be founded by an Australian.

The rules written up by Father Woods and Mary MacKillop for the sisters to live by emphasised poverty, a dependence on divine providence, no ownership of personal belongings, faith that God would provide and that the sisters would go wherever they were needed. The rules were approved by the bishop and, by the end of 1867, 10 other sisters had joined the Josephites. The order arrived in Kensington in 1867 and the sisters soon opened a school in Hectorville in 1870.

Mother Mary MacKillop went beyond what was required in her call of duty. Her work went beyond everyday education and religious instruction. She was instrumental in offering shelter and protection to pregnant girls who had been ostracised by the society of the day. She offered health assistance for the poor by performing hospital work. She was regarded by all as having a real aura of warmth and companionship.

She demonstrated real skill and endeavour at raising money and housing for the poor. This was done regardless of religious persuasion. Indeed her principal benefactor was an elderly Jewish man, Emmanuel Solomon, founder of Adelaide's Jewish community, who was so touched by Mary MacKillop's work that he became her main supplier of homes and shelter for those less fortunate.

After the acquisition of the mother house in Kensington in 1872, Mother Mary MacKillop made preparations to leave for Rome to have the rules of the Sisters of Saint Joseph officially approved. She travelled to Rome in 1873 to seek papal approval for the religious congregation and was encouraged in her work by Pope Pius IX. The authorities in Rome made changes to the way the sisters lived in poverty and declared that the superior-general and her council were the authorities in charge of the order.

The resulting alterations to the rule of life caused a breach between MacKillop and Father Woods who felt that the revised rule compromised the ideal of vowed poverty and blamed MacKillop for not getting the rule accepted in its original form. Before Woods' death on 7 October 1889, he and MacKillop were personally reconciled, but he did not renew his involvement with her order. In 1873 while Mary was in Rome, the sisters started a school in Bridge Street in Kensington. By 1877 the order of Josephites had over 40 schools operating throughout Adelaide.

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