McKillop canonization to be
announced before Christmas?
by Vincent Morello
Dec. 13, 2009
Pope Benedict at the Mary McKillop chapel in Sydney, July 2008.
THE Vatican is tipped to decree Mary MacKillop's second miracle before Christmas, all but confirming her as Australia's first saint.
The woman at the centre of the campaign for her canonisation, Sister Maria Casey, says the Vatican planned to announce last week that the apparent curing of a woman with cancer during the mid-1990s, after prayers to Mary MacKillop, was a miracle.
But it was forced to delay the announcement.
"There was the possibility that we would've heard sometime last week, but events in Rome precluded that," Sr Casey said last night.
She is the Australian Catholic Church's official representative in Rome campaigning for the canonisation.
"I don't envisage any announcement before or during next weekend, but we do think it might be before Christmas," she said. "We are very hopeful indeed."
Sr Casey said it was usual for the Vatican to make announcements in the run-up to Christmas.
The Vatican already recognises that Mary MacKillop is responsible for one miracle, the healing of a woman with terminal leukaemia.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995.
Sister Casey said if a second miracle were decreed by the Vatican before Christmas, Mary MacKillop 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 she is interred, yesterday 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 Mary MacKillop, admitted that excitement and expectations were running high both in Rome and in Australia.
"The sisters are very excited and they're waiting on an announcement some time, hopefully, before Christmas," the spokeswoman said.
Mary MacKillop 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.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/12/2009 22:44]