The Patron Saint of the Land Down Under
A fun bit of trivia about the Australian Church
Fun fact: Australia is an objectively cool country filled with objectively cool people. Anyone who has to deal with the world’s most venomous snakes, gargantuan spiders, ravenous reptiles, man-sized birds with steak knives for toes, and the Australian Magpie (if you know you know) on a daily basis is worthy of my respect.
The tough, gritty personality of Australia as a country undeniably stems from its earliest days as a British penal colony. With its first residents working in deadly coal mines and taking up lives as swashbuckling (apparently), thieving bushrangers in the arid wilderness, perseverance in difficulty is unmistakably an Australian trait.
But one topic you’ll seldom hear talked about is the relationship between the Catholic Church and the country of Australia. Since Great Britain had thrown off its Catholic identity well before Australia’s founding, it’s unsurprising that Aussie culture doesn’t exactly have deep Catholic roots. Still, statistics from Vatican News put the current number of Catholics in Australia at around 20% of its total population- not bad for a British colony founded well after the Elizabethan Settlement.
And while I was investigating this topic to satisfy my curiosity, I struck gold. Certain saints are most definitely diamonds in the rough, doing great work to help the Church but receiving relatively little popular recognition, and Australia’s patron saint is most definitely one of them. St. Mary MacKillop impresses me because she combines her gentle demeanor with the toughness and strength of will required to even survive within the country’s borders.
In 1842, Mary was born in Melbourne to a pair of Scottish immigrants. Her father, Alexander, was well-educated due to a stint in seminary overseas, and even educated Mary himself, but was also an unfortunate sufferer of numerous health problems. Thankfully, Mary was right by his side to help the family even in her youth. The family struggled financially due to Alexander’s health and business difficulties, but Mary worked various jobs without complaint to support them.
As she traveled in search of work, Mary was deeply struck by the poor conditions in which many Australian children were growing up. Around 1866, Mary enacted a solution to this problem by founding the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, Australia’s first religious order. The sisters aimed to provide care and education for young Aussies in need of it, as well as the elderly and imprisoned.
But Mary would soon run into trouble, springing from the fact that her new order was a bit…unconventional. Unlike the vast majority of religious orders at the time, Mary’s was autonomous and self-governed. She had a very specific vision for what she wanted her new Order to be, and the kind of work she wanted it to do, and in the coming years she would prove how dedicated she was to maintaining this vision.
The bishops of Australia were less than pleased by the endeavors of Mary and her sisters. They opposed the sisters’ commitment to a life of poverty, but the biggest sticking point seems to be the Order’s ability to self-govern. Things came to a head in 1871, when Bishop Laurence Sheil of Adelaide outright excommunicated Mary due to her “insubordination”. Due to her faithfulness to what she believed to be God’s call, Mary was cast out of the very Church she sought to serve.
Thankfully, this isn’t where our story ends. Bishop Sheil would go on to regret his decision and lift Mary’s excommunication. In an impressive display of meekness, Mary never spoke a word of criticism against him or any of her opponents, instead choosing to bear her trials patiently. In fact, she went out of her way to praise these bishops when she could. Finally, in 1888, the Order received official papal approval from Leo XIII, who should be canonized himself for a plethora of reasons, but that’s neither here nor there.
Mary would go on to continue serving the poor and afflicted until her death in 1909. Descriptions of Mary portray her as a warm, affectionate, and charismatic individual with “boundless energy”, but also as someone with a contemplative side. One story tells of a convicted murderer, who subjected anyone who tried to even speak to him to a vicious verbal onslaught, being essentially brought to a deathbed conversion by Mary’s influence. But her kindness and generosity, as we’ve seen, was paired with an unmistakable will of iron.
Faced with powerful and influential adversaries, Mary held firm to the Divine call she had received, and her service to the Church was recognized worldwide in 2010 when she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI. The moral of the story? Australians are very cool, and when Australian tenacity is merged with Catholic magnanimity, it can make for a terrific saint story- and one that proves being stubborn isn’t always a bad thing.
For further reading:
“Blessed Mary MacKillop.” Catholic News Agency, www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55602/blessed-mary-mackillop. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.
“St Mary Mackillop (1842-1909).” Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, www.sydneycatholic.org/portfolio/saint-mary-of-the-cross-mackillop/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.
Stefon, Matt. “Saint Mary MacKillop.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Jan. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Mary-MacKillop. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.
Tulloch, Joseph. “New Report Breaks Down Australian Catholic Population.” Vaticannews.va, Vatican News, 17 Apr. 2023, www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2023-04/new-report-breaks-down-australian-catholic-population.html. Accessed 7 Feb. 2024.