POPE BENEDICT XVI issued a powerful signal yesterday when he canonised an Australian nun whose order exposed a paedophile Irish priest back in 1871.
Mother Mary of the Cross MacKillop, the daughter of Scottish immigrants, was yesterday canonised in St Peter’s Square in Rome, thus making her the Catholic Church’s first Australian saint. A woman who spent her life in the service of the sick, the poor and the underprivileged, Mother Mary in 1867 founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Three years later, her order found itself in the eye of a bitter polemic with the Australian church hierarchy when the Josephites exposed paedophile Irish priest Fr Patrick Keating.
When the Josephite order informed the vicar general of Fr Keating’s activities, the Irish priest was sent back to Ireland where he continued to serve as a clergyman. It is believed, however, that a colleague of Fr Keating, Galway man Fr Charles Horan, angered by the removal of Fr Keating, attempted to seek vengeance on the Josephites.
Appointed acting vicar general in 1870, Fr Horan persuaded the ailing Bishop of Adelaide, Laurence Shiel, to excommunicate Mother Mary and 47 other Josephite nuns for alleged “insubordination”. Five months later, on his deathbed, Bishop Shiel revoked that excommunication, thus allowing Mother Mary to return to her work with the poor, the needy and with the Aborigine people.
When Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Mary in 1995, the first step towards being made a saint, he said that she embodied all that is best in Australia and the Australian people. Pope Benedict took up the same theme yesterday, saying: “For many years, countless young people throughout Australia have been blessed with teachers who were inspired by the courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer of Mother Mary MacKillop.”
Among those who attended yesterday’s Vatican canonisation ceremony was 30-year-old Irishman David Keohane, whose family believe that Mother Mary intervened to save him after he had been severely injured in an assault in Coogee, Australia, in August 2008. Keohane, at the time living and working in Sydney, was found unconscious in a pool of blood on a footpath, having apparently been severely beaten.
Among those to visit Keohane as he lay in a coma in hospital in Australia were Josephite nuns, who also took Keohane family members to the tomb of Mother Mary to pray. Keohane awoke from his coma on St Patrick’s Day last year in a miracle recovery which his family attribute to Mother Mary’s intervention.
Thousands of Australians also celebrated Mother Mary’s canonisation yesterday, watching TV coverage of the Vatican ceremony both at home and on large outdoor screens in Sydney, in Melbourne and in Penola, where she established her first school. Also present in Rome yesterday was Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd.