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‘A Saint for all Australians’?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
On 17 October 2010 Mary MacKillop became the first Australian citizen to be officially canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. This event generated a similar outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm to that which greeted Mary’s beatification in 1995. The title of this paper is borrowed from a newspaper article of 1985 by the poet, publisher and self-described ‘implacable agnostic’, Max Harris, a fervent supporter of Mary’s canonization. Saints are the only relatives that you can choose, commented Bishop Ambrose of Milan in the fourth century, and taking this ancient aphorism rather more literally than St Ambrose intended, Dame Edna Everage has claimed descent from a branch of the MacKillop family tree. As Dame Edna’s creator, comedian and satirist Barry Humphries, is a shrewd observer of Australian culture, Mary MacKillop’s triumph as a saint for all Australians seems assured — but what does this reveal about the meaning of sainthood in contemporary Australian society? This paper will trace some important stages in devotion to saints in Australian history before returning to Mary Helen MacKillop, her status as a national icon, and the threads of change and continuity which can be discerned in her cult.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2011
References
1 Advertiser, 6 April 1985, 39. Similar articles by Harris can be found in Weekend Australian, 6–7 April 1985, 6; Advertiser, 11 November 1991, 19; Advertiser, 20 January 1995, 11.
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4 I am very grateful to Dr Marie Foale and Dr David Hilliard for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper. For fuller consideration of the themes of this paper, see Laffin, Josephine, ed., Wliat does it mean to be a Saint? Reflections on Mary MacKillop, Saints and Holiness in the Catholic Tradition (Adelaide, 2010)Google Scholar. There is also a growing body of predominantly hagiographical literature on Mary MacKillop. The Jesuit Paul Gardiner, postulator of Mary’s cause at the Vatican from 1985 to 2008, is responsible for Mary MacKillop: An Extraordinary Australian; The Authorised Biography, rev. edn (Sydney, 2007). Osmund Thorpe’s Mary MacKillop, 3rd rev. edn (Sydney, 1994) is also highly sympathetic but scholarly. Journalist Lesley O’Brien’s Mary MacKillop Unveiled: Australia’s First Saint (Melbourne, 1994) was written with the cooperation of the Mary MacKillop Secretariat of the Sisters of St Joseph, the religious order co-founded by Mary. From a sociological rather than a historical perspective, Sheila McCreanor’s 2001 doctoral thesis for the University of South Australia, ‘Sainthood in Australia: Mary MacKillop and the Print Media’ is a rare exploration of the growing cult of Mary MacKillop. It was published by the Sisters of St Joseph under the same title (Sydney, 2001). McCreanor, a Sister of St Joseph herself, has also edited collections of Mary’s letters: Mary MacKillop and Flora: Correspondence between Mary MacKillop and her Mother, Flora McDonald MacKillop (Sydney, 2004); Mary MacKillop in Challenging Times 1883–1899 (Sydney, 2006).
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