Scottish Catholic Observer

Australia’s first saint, who has Scottish ancestry, was Canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on October 17 last year at the Vatican. A number of pilgrims travelled from the Lochaber area, where Mary’s mother was from, for the celebrations which were also attended by Bishop Toal, Cardinal Keith O’Brien and the two Scottish-based Sisters of St Joseph, the order founded by St Mary of the Cross. Many of the pilgrims will gather again at St Mary’s Church, Fort William, this evening as Bishop Toal joins the community for the feast day Mass.

The feast day is also being observed in St Mary of the Cross’s home country of Australia where hundreds of pilgrims have descended on the small town of Penola—where Mary MacKillop opened a school for disadvantaged children in 1867 and founded her order. Today, school children and pilgrims filed beneath the Vatican flag, that was gifted to the town’s St Joseph’s Church, as they attended a Mass to celebrate the life of the nation’s first Catholic saint.

Mary MacKillop, above, was born in Melbourne in 1842 to Alexander and Flora MacKillop, who had emigrated from Scotland, and she visited her ancestral homeland in 1873.

Sisters of St Joseph Audrey Thomson and Therese McConway, from Australia and New Zealand are currently based in Caol, near Fort William. They are researching the roots of St Mary of the Cross and teaching the local community—and the hundreds of visitors who have flocked to Fort William, including many Australians—more about the life of the saint.

This evening’s feast day Mass will be celebrated at St Mary’s Church, Fort William at 7pm.