ST MARY MACKILLOP | KAIROS GLOBAL | OCTOBER 2021

Author: Jackulin Sheela

Famous Quote: ‘Never see a need without doing something about it.’

St. Mary MacKillop also called St. Mary of the Cross was born on January 15, 1842 in Melbourne, Australia to poor Scottish immigrants. She was the eldest of eight children to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Her father, a former seminarian whose ill health had caused him to abandon study for the priesthood, stressed the importance of education and home-schooled his eight children. When Mary was 14-years-old, she began working and was often her family’s main source of support. 

In 1860, she moved to the small rural town of Penola, South Australia to serve as governess for the children of her aunt and uncle. There Mary MacKillop provided her cousins with a basic education and soon extended this to the poor children of the town. A young priest, Fr. Julian Tenison Woods, who would also become her spiritual director, encouraged her to continue this work, assuring her that educating the poor would be an ideal way to serve God.

In addition to being a teacher, MacKillop wanted to become a nun. She thought she would have to go to Europe to study because Australia did not have any orders, or communities of nuns. In 1866, MacKillop and Fr. Woods founded Australia’s first order of nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, and also established St. Joseph’s School in a converted stable in Penola, providing a free education to children of the area. 

In 1867, Mary MacKillop took her vows and became the first mother superior of the sisters. The following year, the sisters opened schools in other Australian cities, as well as an orphanage and a refuge for former women convicts.

Sr. MacKillop intended that the order be self-governed and devoted to teaching and charity. Therefore, Sr. MacKillop and Fr. Woods, who composed the rule for the order, insisted that the sisters would accept a life of total poverty, trusting in Divine Providence. Further, her school at Penola and other schools that her order founded provided secular as well as religious education, regardless of the religious affiliation of the students. They accepted no money from the government, remaining open to all and accepting only whatever tuition parents could afford, at a time when the government was funding religious schools. 

Some Australian priests and bishops were openly hostile both to the degree of autonomy that the Josephites enjoyed and to Sr. MacKillop’s rejection of federal funding. She and the sisters were said to have garnered more ire when Sr. MacKillop reported accounts of alleged sexual abuse by an Irish priest in southern Australia; the priest was then sent back to Ireland. In 1871, perhaps intentionally misinformed by his advisers, Bishop Laurence Sheil of Adelaide excommunicated Sr. MacKillop for insubordination. The next year, however, on his deathbed, Bishop Sheil acknowledged that he might have been misled, and he reinstated Sr. MacKillop back to her convent.

In 1873, Sr. MacKillop travelled to Rome for a meeting with Pope Pius IX, she won papal approval for the Josephite rule, with modifications that relaxed the degree of poverty imposed upon the sisters. Sr. MacKillop expanded the order’s educational and charitable endeavours and attracted new sisters. 

In 1875 Sr. MacKillop was appointed superior general of the order. She established schools, convents and charitable institutions in Australia. Despite her elevation, she continued to meet with hostility from a number of priests and bishops, and the sisters’ work was circumscribed in certain cities. In 1885, Pope Leo XIII declared the Josephites to be a canonical congregation. Three years later, he gave the ‘Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart’ his approval. Sr. MacKillop continued as mother superior general until her death, except for the period between 1897 and 1899.

Sr. MacKillop suffered a stroke in 1902 and became paralysed on her right side. She passed away on August 8, 1909 in Sydney, Australia. In June 1995 Mary MacKillop was beatified by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI canonised her as a saint on October 17, 2010. St. Mary MacKillop is the first Australian saint. She is the patron saint of Australia, Archdiocese of Brisbane, and the Knights of the Southern Cross.