Mary MacKillop Officially Declared a Saint



Mary MacKillop - Australia's First Saint - AFP Photo


Mary MacKillop officially declared a saint - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The photograph and following excerpt is from the Australian Boadcasting Corporation:

Mary MacKillop has officially been declared Australia's first Catholic saint - Saint Mary MacKillop of the Cross.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed over 50,000 pilgrims who gathered at the Vatican in Rome, of which about 9,000 were from Australia.

St Peter's Square was awash with Australian flags and gold balloons bearing Mary MacKillop's image, as pilgrims packed in to hear the pope's vital words.

Pope Benedict spoke about the achievements of Mary MacKillop.

"She attended to the needs of each young person entrusted to her without regard for station or wills, providing both intellectual and spiritual formation," he said.

The pope also canonised Canada's Brother Andre and four other saints from Italy, Poland and Spain and declared that "throughout the Church they be honoured devoutly among all the saints."

Born in 1842 in Fitzroy, Melbourne, after her mother and father migrated to Australia from Scotland, Mary MacKillop dedicated her early life to educating poor children in regional Penola, South Australia, and at the age of 25 founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.

She was the first Australian nun to set up an order and the first to go outside the cities and administer to the poor.

In the early 1990s the Vatican accepted she was responsible for miraculously curing a woman who had leukaemia in 1961 and in 2009 Pope Benedict XVI confirmed her second miracle, which involved the healing of a woman with inoperable lung cancer during the mid-1990s.

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Testimony on how Padre Pio Cured Woman's Cancer



Statue of Padre Pio - Photograph by Loci B. Lenar


Minister's mother tells how Padre Pio cured her cancer - CI News

The following story is from Catholic Ireland News:

By Sean Ryan

The mother of Minister for Tourism and Sport, Mary Hanafin has told how she believes she would have died in her twenties if she hadn't been cured of cancer by Padre Pio.

Thurles native Mary Hanafin, who has one of Padre Pio's mittens in her possession, has revealed how she believes she 'is a walking miracle' after her illness disappeared following a visit to the Saint in Italy in 1963.

And she told a new BBC documentary, The Miraculous Mitten, that Padre Pio is the key to helping Ireland out of the recession. She said, “He has to offer hope and peace of mind to a modern Ireland that has gone astray in every way. We are losing what he had; simplicity, prayerful life and helping people.”

Mary Hanafin was just four years old when doctors gave her mother the grim prognosis of cancer. She said, “I had been diagnosed with cancer and the surgeon said I had to have an operation in September and I had to have a hysterectomy.”

“I decided if they couldn't do anything for me I would go to see Padre Pio and he would cure me. I was very ill when I got to San Giovanni.”

“I had the privilege of going to the mass he celebrated at 5 o'clock. I thought in my mind would you put your hand on my head and bless me and so he did.” She added, “I was very sick going home two days later. They gave me the last rites and said there was no hope. I came to the following day and there was no cancer. It had to be Padre Pio there was no other way.”

The Capuchin monk Padre Pio became known as the living saint until his death on September 3 1968.

He was beatified in 1999 and canonised in 2002.