one strong womon indeed…

mary mackillop was canonized australia’s first saint today… no mean feat for a strong, independent, feisty womon born in the 1840s...

she was born in fitzroy, victoria in 1842, the eldest of 8 children... she started work as a clerk in a stationery firm at 14, and soon became the primary provider for her family – her father was frequently absent, at one time mortgaging the family farm and leaving the family to fend for themselves while he gallivanted off to scotland for 17 months...

at 18 she became a ‘governess’ to cousins in penola, south australia (a family who appear to have been quite affluent for the time)...

she held a deep commitment to education and social justice for everyone and it was here she had the space, resources and ability to include the poor and under-privileged in her schooling activities… it was also here that she came in contact with fr julian woods… according to sr marie foal, author of Mary Mackillop: biography...

“Mary and Father Woods had a very close relationship.

"I think they loved each other very deeply," she said.

"Father Woods was such a charismatic character that when he moved to Adelaide, according to Mary, many of the mothers of the town locked their doors when they saw Father Woods coming past, because they didn't want their daughters to be running off and joining the Josephites."

in 1866 they opened the first free catholic school in penola, and the next year they formed the sisters of st joseph, the first religious order to be founded by australians, known as the josephites, and affectionately called the ‘brown joeys’ - they chose to wear a brown habit rather than the usual black one - they even had their own josephite emblem - now i'd say that was definitely 'making a statement'!!!

of course, there was a lot of resistance to the order from the clergy – religious orders were always controlled by the local bishops, but the 'brown joeys' insisted on governing themselves with mary as mother superior – a ‘slap in the face’ to the hierarchy…

nothing changes within the priesthood apparently - mary was excommunicated after 4 years with the josephites for daring to go public with claims of child sexual abuse by fr ambrose patrick keating from the kapunda parish…

 
according to an article MacKillop banished after uncovering sex abuse "The Vicar General subsequently sent Father Keating back to his home country of Ireland, where he continued to serve as a priest.

Father Paul Gardiner, who has pushed for MacKillop's canonisation for 25 years, says Father Keating's fellow Kapunda priest Father Horan swore revenge on the nun for uncovering the abuse.

"The story of the excommunication amounts to this: that some priests had been uncovered for being involved in the sexual abuse of children," he said.

"The nuns told him (fr woods) and he told the Vicar General who was in charge at the time and he took severe action.”

"And Father Horan, one of these priests, was so angry with this that he swore vengeance - and there's evidence for this - against Woods by getting at the Josephites and destroying them."

Father Horan was by now working for Adelaide's Bishop Shiel and urged him to break the sisters up by changing their rules.

When MacKillop refused to comply, she was banished from the church at the age of 29.

"Mary was not excommunicated, in fact or in law. She submitted to a farcical ceremony where the Bishop had ... lost it," Father Gardiner said.

"He was a puppet being manipulated by malicious priests. This sounds terrible but it's true."

Five months later Bishop Shiel was gravely ill and dying. From his deathbed he instructed that MacKillop be absolved and restored.”

note the priest was sent home to continue child abuse while mary was excommunicated!!!!! typical - and they still get moved around to continue their criminal behaviour today (now mary would be horrified at the extent of sexual abuse within the church - and at how long it's taken for them to acknowledge and start to address!!!!) and yes, she was un-excommunicated, but there were constant battles with the church hierarchy…

broken rites australia helps victims of church-related sex-abuse, and they confirm and expand on the above in their article Church sex-abuse victims see Mary MacKillop as their patron saint...

education wasn’t the order's only function - they also founded hospitals and orphanages, provided shelters for the homeless, former prostitutes and unmarried mothers. with no funding, they raised all of the money themselves - mostly by begging… property deeds have just been released showing mary mackillop to be a savvy investor – she had bought 11 properties with monies raised by the order and by going into debt (view youtube clip here)… definitely another ‘thorn in the side’ for ‘the powers that be’ – they would have preferred these monies go into the church coffers!!!

she died in 1909 – so it’s taken 101 years for the church to recognise her… "MacKillop's recognition as Australia's first saint might have come 20 years earlier if not for a delay that is still formally unexplained but says much about the tribulations the Melbourne-born nun faced at the hands of her male colleagues in the Catholic Church." from an article Cover-up held back Mary MacKillop's cause for decades...

growing up in a different era to mary i have a passionate hatred of misogynistic, patriarchal institutions, and i have to wonder had she lived in an era where womyn had less strictures placed on them and more opportunities available to them, would she have become a nun? somehow i doubt it… i don’t doubt that she would have been an advocate for the underprivileged no matter what, but let’s face it, there was very little scope in the mid-1800s for womyn to do anything in their own right - and people actually feared religion and abusive men less that unmarried, unencumbered womyn, so being a 'bride of christ' afforded them the ability to travel further and outreach to more people… would she be happy with all the ‘hoo-haa’ this sainthood shit is creating? i doubt it - i think she would prefer her legacy be the continued support of those in need, and that her order continue to make a difference in peoples lives…

ohhh, she was also an advocate for a womon’s right to vote and once attained, she encouraged all 'her nuns' to vote… “It is the duty of all of us to vote,” she wrote to her sisters in 1903. “Find out who are the members proposed for election and vote for those who are considered most friendly to the Church and to Religion. Every so called Catholic is not the best man.” – bet the hierarchy didn’t like that either!!!!!

goddamn she was one helluva womon taking on the misogynistic, patriarchal church hierarchy – she certainly deserves recognition here as one strong sister…