Scottish Catholic Observer

THE nun who is soon to become Australia’s first Catholic saint was briefly excommunicated by the church in part because she exposed a paedophile priest, a new documentary has claimed.

Blessed Mary MacKillop, who will be canonised by Pope Benedict XVI later this month, is known as a tireless educator and founder of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart order of nuns that ventured into remote outback areas of Australia.

A documentary to be screened on national broadcaster ABC will paint her as a woman who also spoke up to Church authorities about allegations of child molestation by priests.

“The story of the excommunication amounts to this: that some priests had been uncovered for being involved in the sexual abuse of children,” Fr Paul Gardiner, a campaigner for MacKillop’s sainthood told the documentary makers.

Blessed MacKillop and her nuns told their superiors and severe action was taken, including sending one priest back to Ireland, and this so enraged other priests that they swore to take revenge against her order, he said.

Part of this revenge included encouraging the then Bishop of Adelaide Laurence Shiel to excommunicate MacKillop, something he duly did in 1871.

“She (MacKillop) submitted to a farcical ceremony where the bishop had lost it,” Gardiner told the documentary, which screens on October 10. “He was being manipulated by malicious priests.”

The man sent back to Ireland continued as a priest, the documentary says.

“Were they covering up sexual abuse? Well, I suppose you could put it that way,” Fr Gardiner said. “Or priests being annoyed that somebody had uncovered it and being so angry that the destruction of the Josephites was decided upon.”

From his deathbed some five months later, Bishop Shiel instructed that MacKillop be absolved and the Melbourne-born woman went on to grow her order around the country, attracting hundreds of women to her cause. Calls for MacKillop’s