Catholics celebrate Mary MacKillop news

Australia's latest milestone has materialised in Mary MacKillop - a rebel nun who
will become our first saint 100 years after her death.
Five million Catholics call Australia home but the entire nation took notice on
Sunday morning after the Vatican decreed her second miracle, paving the way for
imminent canonisation.
The Sisters of St Joseph, the order of nuns founded by Mother Mary, celebrated in
Sydney at the news and the decades of work and waiting to overcome the final hurdle.
The approved miracle involved the healing of a woman with inoperable cancer during
the mid 1990s after she prayed to Mother Mary.
Outside Mary MacKillop Chapel in North Sydney, where Mary is interred, Sister Anne
Derwin on Sunday morning read out a statement from the woman who asked not to be
identified.
"I feel personally humbled and grateful to Mary MacKillop, and the influence she has
had on my life," the statement read.
"I hope this news today provides others, especially younger Australians, with
inspiration and encouragement to live as generously and as compassionately as Mary
did."
Sr Judy Sippel, who is overseeing preparations for next year's likely canonisation,
said she found out Mother Mary's second miracle had been approved by the Pope about
11pm (AEDT) on Saturday.
"I hadn't been able to sleep waiting for (the news) to come," Sr Judy told AAP.
"It's just so exciting one of our own has made it to the ranks of saints. It's not
easy getting to the top in Rome."
Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said Mother Mary fought many
battles within the Church when establishing the Sisters of St Joseph, and the dozens
of schools they created to educate less fortunate children.
"At times she was treated badly and what was remarkable about her was she was still
able to forgive and to remain normal and balanced and kind," Cardinal Pell told
reporters in Sydney.
Church bells sounded through the tiny Coonawarra centre of Penola, in South
Australia, when the news came.
About 130 parishioners and volunteers nervously waited on Saturday evening for the
news at the Mary MacKillop Penola Centre.
"Our little town is so important because it was the beginning with Mary," Claire
Larkin, chairperson of the management committee of the centre, said on Sunday.
"Many places have a claim to Mary because she was a traveller all her life."
The centre includes the original schoolhouse where Mother Mary taught local children
in 1867.
She had moved to the town in 1860 as a governess and with the local parish priest
established the school for the children of working class people.
Sr Marion Gambin, head of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in South
Australia, said it was a great day "for all Australians because Mary is someone that
all Australians can look up to".
Mary MacKillop was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne, in 1842, where the Sisters of St
Joseph also have a congregation.
"She walked these very streets, she built this building that we're in," Sr Josephine
Dubiel said on Sunday from the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre in East Melbourne.
"It was set up as a permanent providence, to provide food, shelter, roof over the
head for women and children who in those days, well there was no Centrelink, no
government pension, so who was to look after them?"
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Mother Mary made education possible for
many Australian children.
"Today, 100 years after her passing, the work that Mary MacKillop began continues
through the Sisters of St Joseph," Ms Gillard said in a statement.
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Philip Wilson said in a
statement that Mother Mary had quite rightly already become known as "the Australian
people's saint".
Mary MacKillop died in 1909 at the age of 67.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995 after her first miracle was decreed,
also for a woman cured of inoperable cancer.
Her canonisation is expected to take place sometime in early 2011.