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. He began his studies for the priesthood at age twelve, and two years later went to the Scots College in Rome; he also studied at Blairs College in Kincardineshire, but at the age of 29 left, just before he was due to be ordained. He migrated to Australia and arrived in Sydney in 1838. MacKillop's mother, Flora MacDonald, born in Fort William, had left Scotland and arrived in Melbourne in 1840. Her father and mother married in Melbourne on 14 July 1840. MacKillop was the eldest of their eight children. Her younger siblings were Margaret ("Maggie", 1843–1872), John (1845–1867), Annie (1848–1929), Alexandrina ("Lexie", 1850–1882), Donald (1853–1925), Alick (who died at 11 months old) and Peter (1857–1878). Donald became a Jesuit priest and worked among the Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory. Lexie became a member of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Melbourne.
MacKillop's mother, Flora, was killed on 30 May 1886 when the steamer SS Ly-ee-Moon ran aground and sank at Green Cape on the Far South Coast of New South Wales.
MacKillop was educated at private schools and by her father. She received her First Holy Communion on 15 August 1850 at the age of nine. In February 1851, Alexander MacKillop left his family behind after having mortgaged the farm and their livelihood and made a trip to Scotland lasting some 17 months. Throughout his life he was a loving father and husband but not successful as either a farmer or gold prospector. Consequently, the family faced many hardships.
MacKillop started work at the age of 16 as a clerk in a stationery store in Melbourne. To provide for her needy family, in 1860 she took a job as governess at the estate of her aunt and uncle, Margaret MacKillop Cameron and Alexander Cameron in Penola, South Australia, where she was to look after their children and teach them. Already set on helping the poor whenever possible, she included the other farm children on the Cameron estate as well. This brought her into contact with Fr Julian Tenison-Woods, who had been the parish priest in the south east since his ordination to the priesthood in 1857 after completing his studies at Sevenhill.
MacKillop stayed for two years with the Camerons before accepting a job teaching the children of Portland, Victoria in 1862. Later she taught at the Portland school and after opening her own boarding school, Bay View House Seminary for Young Ladies, now Bayview College, in 1864, was joined by the rest of her family.
Founding of school and religious congregation
In 1866, Julian Tenison-Woods invited MacKillop and her sisters Annie and Lexie to come to Penola and to open a Catholic school. Woods was appointed director of education and became the founder, along with MacKillop, of a school they opened in a stable there. After renovations by their brother, the MacKillops started teaching more than 50 children. At this time MacKillop made a declaration of her dedication to God and began wearing black.
On 21 November 1866, the feast day of the Presentation of Mary, several other women joined MacKillop and her sisters. MacKillop adopted the religious name of "Sister Mary of the Cross" and she and Lexie began wearing simple religious habits. The small group began to call themselves the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and moved to a new house in Grote Street, Adelaide. There they founded a new school at the request of the bishop, Laurence Sheil OFM.
The "rule of life" developed by Woods and MacKillop for the community emphasized poverty, a dependence on divine providence, no ownership of personal belongings, faith that God would provide and willingness to go where needed. The rule of life was approved by Bishop Sheil. By the end of 1867, ten other women had joined the Josephites, who adopted a plain brown religious habit. Due to the colour of their attire and their name, the Josephite sisters became colloquially known as the "Brown Joeys".
Expansion of the Sisters of St Joseph
In an attempt to provide education to all the poor, particularly in rural areas, a school was opened in Yankalilla, South Australia, in October 1867. By the end of 1869, more than 70 members of the Sisters of St Joseph were educating children at 21 schools in Adelaide and the country. MacKillop and her Josephites were also involved with an orphanage; neglected children; girls in danger; the aged poor; a reformatory (in Johnstown near Kapunda); and a home for the aged and incurably ill. Generally, the Josephite sisters were prepared to follow farmers, railway workers and miners into the isolated outback and live as they lived.
In December 1869, MacKillop and several other sisters travelled to Brisbane to establish the order in Queensland. They were based at Kangaroo Point and took the ferry or rowed across the Brisbane River to attend Mass at St Stephen's Cathedral. Two years later, she was in Port Augusta, South Australia for the same purpose. The Josephite congregation expanded rapidly and, by 1871, 130 sisters were working in more than 40 schools and charitable institutions across South Australia and Queensland.
MacKillop clashed with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Brisbane, James Quinn, over the control of the many schools she established; MacKillop believed the sisters should control the schools while Quinn believed the diocese should control them. In 1879, relationships between them had deteriorated to the point that Quinn directed the sisters to leave his diocese. Despite protests by the laity, Quinn was determined and MacKillop and her Josephite sisters had left the diocese by mid-1880 with other Catholic orders taking over the operation of their schools. When the Diocese of Rockhampton was excised from the Brisbane diocese on 29 December 1882, it enabled MacKillop and her sisters to return to Queensland, where they established a school in Clermont and then in other places within the new diocese.
In 1881, Elzear Torreggiani, then Bishop of Armidale and a Capuchin who had worked in both North Wales at Pantasaph and London at Peckham, prior to being consecrated in London in 1879, for the Armidale Diocese; established Mother Mary MacKillop's Sisters of St Joseph at Tenterfield and defended their power of central government at the 1885 Plenary Council.