St Mary of the Cross MacKillop (1842–1909) was an Australian religious sister who co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and devoted her life to educating the rural poor across the Australian colonies. Born Mary Helen MacKillop on 15 January 1842 in Fitzroy (now a suburb of Melbourne), then part of the colony of New South Wales, she grew up in a family that knew poverty firsthand. She first came to Penola in South Australia in 1860, aged eighteen, to work as governess to her Cameron relatives at Penola Station. She taught the other farm children as well and there met Father Julian Tenison Woods, the parish priest of Penola since 1857, who shared her conviction that the scattered children of the rural colonies needed Catholic education. After two years teaching at Portland, Victoria, and opening a boarding school there in 1864, she returned to Penola in January 1866. On the feast of St Joseph, 19 March 1866, Mary and Father Woods co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Penola. That day she wore a black dress marking her dedication and opened the first Josephite school in a converted six-stalled stable at the corner of Queen and Bowden Streets, for more than thirty poor rural children. On the feast of the Presentation, 21 November 1866, Woods gave her a Rule and addressed her as "Sister"; she took the religious name Sister Mary of the Cross. By June 1867 the new congregation had moved to Adelaide, where Woods had been appointed Director of Catholic Education for South Australia. By the end of that year ten women had joined, and the Josephites adopted a plain brown habit that earned them the affectionate nickname the Brown Joeys. Their charism was radical for its time: personal poverty, no private property, and living in small communities among the people they served, educating children in the vast rural reaches of the colonies. The 1867 stone schoolhouse at Penola—the surviving Woods–MacKillop Schoolhouse—was commissioned in 1866 and built by James Stark under a contract of £290. It was occupied before 11 June 1867 and stands today as part of the Mary MacKillop Penola Centre, a heritage precinct that draws pilgrims from across Australia. The young congregation soon faced its most severe trial. In 1871 Bishop Laurence Sheil of Adelaide excommunicated Mary for alleged insubordination—an act entangled with the Josephites having reported a priest who was sexually abusing children. The sentence was lifted before Bishop Sheil's death in 1872, and Mary was received back into the Church. She never wavered in her obedience to the Church. The order continued to grow. Papal approval of the Sisterhood came in 1873, and in 1888 a decree from Rome constituted the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart as an approved Regular Congregation with a Mother House in Sydney. Mary died on 8 August 1909 at North Sydney. Her tomb rests at Mary MacKillop Place, North Sydney, now one of Australia's principal pilgrimage sites. She was declared Venerable on 13 June 1992, beatified by Pope John Paul II on 19 January 1995 at Randwick, Sydney, and canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on 17 October 2010 in St Peter's Square, Rome. At the canonisation she was proclaimed "Mary of the Cross (Mary Helen) MacKillop (1842–1909), Virgin, Foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart." She is Australia's first and only canonised Catholic saint. Feast Day: August 8 Patronage: Australia; the Archdiocese of Brisbane
📖 Further Reading
- Paul Gardiner SJ. An Extraordinary Australian: Mary MacKillop — The Authorised Biography — The standard authorised biography, covering the Penola years and the 1866 co-founding with Fr Tenison Woods.
