By DEB PIROCH
Only rarely do most of us refer to the Blessed Virgin as a “saint.” This is often seen in the name of churches, for instance. “I attend St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception,” as an example. But is Mary truly a saint?
Yes. She is the greatest of all the saints. To call her a saint also underlines a basic principle of Catholicism, namely, that we do not worship her as a goddess. We pray for her intercession, just as we do with all the saints. However, we honor her above all of the other saints, being born without original sin, remaining sinless and spotless, the Virgin Mother of God.
Aside from the names of churches, we also see the name of “St. Mary” in the names of Catholic entities that are named in her honor, like hospitals, universities, and so on. One must remember that there are obviously many other saints also named Mary, but these would be distinguished from the Virgin in the way their name is written. To refer to Mary as a saint still feels a bit awkward, as we do not commonly refer to her this way in prayer or the Mass. In the Litany of Loreto she is given many beautiful names, for example, but none refer to her as a saint.
Not uncommon is it for both men and women to be named in honor of Mary. St. Mary MacKillop of the Cross is just such a one. Born the eldest of eight children in 1842, she is Australia’s first canonized saint and the founder of the Josephite order of nuns. Two of her siblings also became religious. Mary is also a patron saint for sexual abuse survivors, for she and her order suffered when a priest who was sexually abusing children was reported and sent back to Ireland.
Mary was born to poor immigrants from Scotland and raised in a Catholic home in Victoria. Her father had been a seminarian who gave up his vocation due to poor health. She first started to work outside the home at age 14, because the income was needed by the family. At 18 she moved to rural Penola to help educate the children of her aunt and uncle. She already felt for the uneducated and extended teaching at the same time to other children less fortunate in the town.
Eventually, after her experience as a governess and starting a town school, she was invited by Fr. Julian Tenison Woods, a Catholic priest, to open the country’s first free Catholic school. This began, most appropriately, in a stable.
Later that year in 1866, on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary, they founded another school at the request of Bishop Laurence Sheil, OFM. She was 25 and adopted the religious name Sr. Mary of the Cross and took a habit. Their rule was approved by the bishop and she, along with ten others, agreed not to own property, go where needed, and rely on God’s Providence to provide their needs. They wore a brown habit. Within five years they had 130 sisters and had placed them in 40 countries. It was Australia’s first religious order.
The sisters fulfilled a much-needed role. They expanded to care for orphans, the aged, the dying, prostitutes, unmarried mothers, and aborigines. They worked generally with any poor who needed aid and accepted no help from the government. They also would not accept wealthy students in their schools and would go into the outback, where many others simply would not go.
But from the beginning there began a conflict over the order until its direction was firmly laid down; both Fr. Woods and Sr. Mary felt the order should not receive its orders from the local bishop but from Rome and it caused much suffering for the nuns till this was established. Indeed, for most of her life, MacKillop would carry a cross of opposition to her work from this group of clergy or that, but she was remarkable in her patience in dealing with all with the utmost charity. Not until 1885 did the Josephites or the Order of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart receive final approval from Rome, from Pope Leo XIII.
In addition, there was a period of about a year, where she was excommunicated and her order essentially disbanded, in vengeful behavior by a vicar general of their diocese. The Josephites discovered that a priest, Fr. Keating, had been guilty of pedophilia, and reported this to Fr. Woods, who informed the vicar general. The vicar general sent him back to Ireland. At the time, the public was told he left due to problems with alcohol. When the vicar general died the same year, he was replaced by a good friend of Keating’s, Fr. Charles Horan, who was livid about him being sent away.
He took revenge on Fr. Woods by punishing the Josephites, with whom he actively worked. Because Mary would not consent to the Rule being changed, Horan excommunicated Mary and anyone who agreed with her was told to leave. Those who agreed to change the Rule could stay with the diocese under their auspices. Mary was secretly housed by a Jewish donor, who had three postulants with her. There were no other chapters and she discouraged others to follow her until the matter was resolved. The following year when the bishop was dying, he told Horan on his deathbed to lift the excommunication.
Mary died in 1909, her health going downhill after a stroke seven years before. She was laid to rest in a cemetery, and so many visitors would take a handful of earth from her grave that she was moved to a vault at the new Memorial Chapel at the Mother of God altar in Sydney. Her case for sainthood was begun fewer than 20 years after her death.
Pope John Paul II beatified Mary, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized her. Both miracles involved cancer. The first involved the healing of 23-year-old Veronica Hopkins from leukemia, who was sent home to die. She was healed and went on to have six children and become a grandmother. The second miracle involved Kathleen Evans, who had five children and developed brain and lung cancer. Told she had only a month to live, she wore a relic of Mary MacKillop and prayed. Ten months later she was cancer free, the inoperable cancer having miraculously disappeared and only scarring left in its place.
Three Popes have visited Mary: Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. Her feast day is August 8.
Just as in the time of Mother MacKillop, even today the Christian community is faced with many “deserts”: the squalid lands of indifference and intolerance, the desolation of racism and contempt for other human beings, the aridity of selfishness and infidelity: sin in all its forms and expressions, and the scandal of sin magnified by the means of social communication.
If the Church continually refers to the law of God, written in the human heart and revealed in the Old and New Testaments, she does so not out of an arbitrary attachment to the past tradition and out of an outdated view. It is that man detached from his Creator and Redeemer cannot fulfill his destiny and will not have peace. Wherever the Church is she must be “The sign and safeguarding of the transcendent character of the human person” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 76) . . . “Blessed be God in his saints!” — Pope John Paul II, January 19, 1995, Beatification Mass of St. Mary MacKillop.
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