Mary MacKillop, Australia’s Saint, her feast day, August 8th
Images of Mary, the woman who was the nun and foundress.
In his general audience talk, Pope Francis called her “an extraordinary religious sister,” who dedicated her life to “the intellectual and religious formation of the poor in rural Australia.”
“Wisely reading the signs of the times,” this young woman whose parents had emigrated from Scotland, understood that the best way for her to spread the Gospel and attract others to encounter Jesus was through teaching young people, “in the knowledge that Catholic education is a form of evangelisation. It is a great form of evangelisation,” said the Pope, who himself had taught in high schools in Argentina.
“Mary MacKillop was convinced that the purpose of education is the integral development of the person both as an individual and as a member of the community, and that this requires wisdom, patience and charity on the part of every teacher,” he said.
An essential part of St MacKillop’s zeal for sharing the Gospel, the Pope said, was her dedication to caring for the poor and marginalised.
“This is very important,” he said. Along “the path to holiness, which is the Christian path, the poor and the marginalised are the protagonists and a person cannot move forward in holiness if he or she does not also devote himself or herself to them in one way or another.”
Carol Glatz CNS
