Essay On Mary Helen Mckillop

Mary Helen MacKillop was born in the suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne on the 15th of January 1842. MacKillop was born to Alexander and Flora MacKillop, Catholic migrants originally from the Highland area of Scotland. The young Mary was educated at private schools but, mostly by her father, up until the age of 14 when she quit school to work and provide for her family. Through her parent’s devotion to the Catholic faith she became more and more involved in the Church and Catholic practices.
In the 1840’s Australia was going through a religious revolution, up until the turn of the decade the Church of England was the official religion and the only recognized faith of the colonies but in 1947 the Governor of New South Wales dismissed the Church

Whilst there Mary set up a school in a disused barn there she educated the young children without exclusion and also did not dispel those with a means to pay for an education and those that did not. Whilst in Penola Mary on the 19th of March 1866, also on the feast of St. Joseph, Mary became a nun and from that day adopted the title of Mary of the Cross. She also became the first Australian woman to establish an order, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, to administer their faith and values to working class Australians especially young

In 1871 Mary returned to Adelaide where her order was at the time, not doing well. When she arrived back many of the sisters in Adelaide felt cast out by the priests which at the were taking control of the sisters. In 1871 Bishop James Quinn set up a commission to examine the life and work of the sisters in Mary’s order. The proposition that had come out of the commission included making more professional and longer serving sisters, lay sisters. The commission also established that that each of the sisters convents should be put under control of local priests, these propositions were against the orders and Mary’s ideals. She was excommunicated by the bishop until his death.
After the initial difficulties in Australia, Mary traveled to Rome in 1873 in order to gain support to undo the new rules and regulations set out for the Sisters by travelling to the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, whilst there she met the Pope of the time Pope Pius IX who referred to her upon the two meeting as the ‘excommunicated one’. Whilst in Europe she travelled to visit her relatives in Scotland and visited many schools and churches in England and France. In 1874 she set sail back to Australia with a letter of approval from Rome for the with the structure of the sisters