MacKillop supporter tips miraculous news

The Vatican is expected to decree Mary MacKillop's second miracle between December
21 and December 25, all but confirming her as Australia's first saint, the woman at
the centre of the campaign for her canonisation in Rome says.
Sister Maria Casey says the Vatican planned to announce last week that Mother Mary's
apparent curing of a woman with cancer during the mid-1990s was indeed a miracle,
but was forced to delay the announcement.
"There was the possibility that we would've heard sometime last week but events in
Rome precluded that," Sister Casey, the Australian Catholic Church's official
representative in Rome campaigning for the canonisation, told AAP on Sunday night.
"I don't envisage any announcement before or during next weekend but we do think it
might be before Christmas, we are very hopeful indeed."
Sister Casey said it was usual for the Vatican to make announcements in the run-up
to Christmas Day.
The Vatican already recognises that Mother Mary is responsible for one miracle.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995, meaning the Vatican verified her
first miracle of healing a woman with terminal leukaemia.
The second miracle said to have been performed by Mother Mary, which would confirm
sainthood, has already been ratified by medical experts.
Sister Casey said if the second miracle were decreed by the Vatican before
Christmas, Mother Mary would probably be canonised early in the new year.
Speculation that an announcement was near began building after Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd attended mass at Mary MacKillop Chapel in North Sydney, where Mother Mary is
interred, on Sunday morning.
A spokesman for the prime minister would not confirm if the visit had anything to do
with any announcement but a spokeswoman for the Sisters of St Joseph, the
congregation founded by Mother Mary, admitted excitement and expectations were
running high in Rome and in Australia.
"The sisters are very excited and they're waiting on an announcement sometime,
hopefully, before Christmas," the spokeswoman told AAP on Sunday.
Mother Mary is revered for her lifetime of work across Australia establishing
schools and refuges for orphans and the needy.
She was born in Melbourne, worked extensively in South Australia and died in North
Sydney in 1909 aged 67.