Saint Mary MacKillop

Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ (in religion Mary of the Cross; 15 January 1842 – 8 August 1909) was an Australian religious sister. She was born in Melbourne but is best known for her activities in South Australia. Together with Fr Julian Tenison-Woods, she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a congregation of religious sisters that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor. The process to have MacKillop declared a saint began in the 1920s, and she was beatified in January 1995 by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI prayed at her tomb during his visit to Sydney for World Youth Day 2008 and in December 2009 approved the Catholic Church's recognition of a second miracle attributed to her intercession. She was canonised on 17 October 2010, during a public ceremony in St Peter's Square at the Vatican. She is the first Australian Catholic saint. Mary MacKillop is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Brisbane and of Australia. Mary Helen MacKillop was born on 15 January 1842 in what is now the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria (at the time part of an area called Newtown in the then British colony of New South Wales), to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Although she continued to be known as "Mary", when she was baptised six weeks later she received the names Maria Ellen. MacKillop's parents lived in Roybridge (Scottish Gaelic: Drochaid Ruaidh), Lochaber, Inverness-shire, Scotland, prior to emigrating to Australia. Others on both sides of the family had emigrated previously. MacKillop visited the village in the 1870s where St Margaret's, the local parish church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Argyll and the Isles, now has a shrine to her. MacKillop's father, Alexander MacKillop, was born in Perthshire.