Mary Mackillop, A View from Rome

The Hon Tim Fischer was Australia’s deputy Prime Minister in the Howard Government from 1996-99. He retired from politics in 2001 and is currently Australia’s Ambassador to the Holy See. In Rome, Tim Fischer has been closely associated with the final stages of the canonisation of Australia’s first saint, Mary MacKillop. On the 2 September 2010, the Ambassador addressed The Sydney Institute, relaunching Anne Henderson’s book MacKillop’s Sisters – A Life Unveiled and outlining the significance of Mother Mary MacKillop and her upcoming canonisation. This paper is an edited transcript of Tim Fischer’s address.

Anne Henderson is Deputy Director of The Sydney Institute and an author. Anne Henderson’s book Mary MacKillop’s Sisters – A Life Unveiled (HarperCollins) was reissued in 2010, and relaunched by The Hon Tim Fischer AC on Tuesday 2 September 2010, in advance of the canonisation of Mother Mary MacKillop of the Cross. Anne Henderson responded to Tim Fischer in the address which follows.

MARY MACKILLOP, A VIEW FROM ROME

TIM FISCHER

It’s good to see so many friends here today. I commend the contribution that The Sydney Institute has made to the wellbeing of Sydney for its recent anniversary, and a much needed one for helping to ensure Australia is not an insular part of the world but indeed engaged in debate within and without.

This is an awesome unity ticket you are witnessing here this morning, because Mary MacKillop’s Sisters – A Life Unveiled was actually launched by one Paul Keating, former prime minister of Australia. The book is being relaunched by one Tim Fischer, the former deputy prime minister of Australia on the opposite side of politics, but now in the apolitical role of Australian Ambassador to the Holy See. I have zero comment on certain domestic matters unfolding as we speak and DFAT has sworn me to this approach.

It is a great honour to be asked to launch this book. With regard to the canonisation, before I turn to the book specifically, some 8000 Australians are now heading to Rome. DFAT will be putting extra resources into consular back up for the visit of some 8000 Australians to St Peter’s Square on the 17 October 2010, for the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. Both David Richie, Australia’s Ambassador to Italy, and myself will be working closely together to make sure there will be maximum help to the thousands of Australians coming. And maximum joy, as well, as we celebrate.

I’m also delighted to confirm that the 100 dozen donated Coonawarra Wines of excellence passed the Somalian pirates, are through the Suez Canal and are en route to the week of activities and celebrations of the 14-18 October, helping out the Sisters of St Joseph and the Church. Although the detailed matters relating to the canonisation are matters for the SOSJ and the Vatican, one Vatican flag, silk version, has been delivered to Penola. I was happy to present that three weeks ago. They needed cheering up after a mini tornado had hit Penola. I think that was a good bargain: they get one beautiful Vatican flag and 100 dozen of the best of the best local wine is arriving in Rome. It’ll be a good chance to showcase good Australian product. Why Penola? Well let’s turn to Mary MacKillop.

I’m also delighted to confirm that the 100 dozen donated Coonawarra Wines of excellence passed the Somalian pirates, are through the Suez Canal and are en route to the week of activities and celebrations of the 14-18 October

Born Melbourne – that ticks the state colony of Victoria. Sacked unfairly as a school teacher in Portland, she bounced back. On to Penola – she opened her first school in South Australia 1866. There she established such a fantastic template that it kicked on, and began the Sisters of St Joseph, so well developed in the book Mary MacKillop’s Sisters. Next, excommunicated in Adelaide and recommunicated in Adelaide, Mary MacKillop went on to Sydney and Queensland. The order’s provincial house is in North Sydney – also where Mother Mary died. She worked all the way up to Townsville and back, thus was a presence in Queensland. She went to Albany at age 31 on a ship sailing through to Colombo and Italy. She landed at Brindisi and caught a train, (I am very very proud of her) via the 18 hour train service at the time, from Brindisi to Rome. She saw the Pope twice, and the Pope ruled in her favour against some bishops of the era. The Sisters of St Joseph have gone on from strength to strength since that time.

So we do look forward to welcoming many of you in Rome at the time, welcoming His Eminence Cardinal Pell, Archbishop Philip Wilson, Sister Anne Derwin of the Sisters of St Joseph and about 130 Sisters. I’m practising cooking lamingtons for the morning tea I’m hosting in their honour.

A brave lady, a devoted lady, a devout lady, a dedicated lady.

But now, a little bit of breaking news. I haven’t referred to one other state – the colony of Tasmania. Following some confirmation down there on Monday, with Father Michael Tate and Archbishop Doyle, I’m very pleased to confirm for the first time that on the 18 October 1897 Mary MacKillop made a one-day visit to Hobart, whilst on a ship returning from New Zealand. She paid four shillings for a taxi to Lower Sandy Bay to see a sister in a convent there, and one shilling on the tram ride back – there were trams in Hobart at the time. We’re now able to say that this was one quintessential Australian of renown, who in fact, against the odds, physically went to every colony as they existed at that time, as colonies of our great country Australia. Four trips to New Zealand, three trips to Ireland from Rome, two to Scotland, one to London and often running out of money and having to beg her passage along the way. A brave lady, a devoted lady, a devout lady, a dedicated lady.

But today’s focus is on the sisters that then took up the cudgels. This book I’m relaunching, Mary MacKillop’s Sister: A Life Unveiled, by Anne Henderson, with an introduction by Edmund Campion, and the original launching speech by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, I can say is an excellent snapshot. Of necessity, as the lengthy book it is, the Sisters that are covered in its packed pages, its 300 pages are a snapshot that goes back to the records and the archives and the oral interpretations and the memories of so many people.

These are hands-on sisters. They don’t just hide away in the library of a monastery or a convent, or hide away in the various cocoons that can come to exist in the oldest organisation in the world. They are out there. They are engaged.

Let me just highlight one. Sister Sheila McCreanor who’s coming to Rome, is very active with the Sisters of St Joseph. I’ve met her a number of times. Born in Barmera, South Australia, entered the SOSJ in 1968 aged 17. She taught in South Australia and then studied elsewhere, and ultimately ended up coordinating a masters thesis on refugee students in Catholic schools because of her work in various suburbs of Adelaide and Sydney. She travelled to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, and worked through in Laotian refugee camps so that she could better understand why they were so scared, why the children had to be sort of unlocked. She returned to resume teaching in Australia. Now she is working in North Sydney and on her way to Roma now.

I want to make one point: these are hands-on sisters. They don’t just hide away in the library of a monastery or a convent, or hide away in the various cocoons that can come to exist in the oldest organisation in the world. They are out there. They are engaged. Indeed Sister Mary MacKillop, in a very direct letter before the election leading up to the federation of Australia, urged the sisters to go out and vote. And so we have Sheila McCreanor, on the border between Thailand and Laos. I just want to paint a scene for one minute here. I’ve been to those refugee camps, watched the immigration officers interviewing a young family. I can still see it in my mind – husband in nice clean coloured T-shirt, wife, both in their thirties, two kids probably seven or eight.

Every utterance and response to this 40 minute interview swung their life.  Because it was either a dream ticket out to Australia, or it was back into the camps and perhaps for subsequent selection. The problem is those camps were being raided. Some of the kids were being dragged back into Cambodia, back into Laos, and back into slave gangs and into terrorist and guerrilla activity. I’m just in awe of the fact that this Australian nun, as part of a template, the paradigm of the operation and the modus operandi, established by Mary MacKillop, of the SOSJ, saw Sister Sheila McCreanor through the Indochina refugee camps where lives are being decided by people under extraordinary pressure. I have the greatest respect for one particular immigration officer, who subsequently died in an aeroplane crash when an aeroplane ran out of fuel on approach to Bangkok. He was putting every single effort into getting it right and doing the right thing in the job that was allocated to him at the time.

Poverty? Yes it does exist. But I tell you, it’s smaller in quantum and smaller in per capita than in the United States of America, the largest economy in the world, by a country mile.

Ladies and gentlemen, the last thing I want to say goes to the heart of what we’re about in saluting a great Australian – not so much for her spiritual activity, for non-believers perhaps not at all. Mary MacKillop has done many miracles – the latest was this morning. I had breakfast with Sir Laurence Street, whose nickname of course is Lorenzo the magnificent. I said, “hang on a tick. I went and saw your tomb in Florence a month ago with a Senator. I went to the Medici chapels and there was the tomb, Lorenzo the magnificent, and you’re back alive again!” I was very happy to shake hands with the extra miracle by Mary MacKillop in recreating, and resurrecting Sir Lawrence Street. In very good form he was this morning, I must hasten to add.

But I know Senator Marise Payne, who is here, and others, have reflected on the fact that there is much Australia can be proud of. We have had 3.3 per cent economic growth figures over night for example. But there is still an underclass. Yes it does exist, out there in the Western suburbs and in many other places. Poverty? Yes it does exist. But I tell you, it’s smaller in quantum and smaller in per capita than in the United States of America, the largest economy in the world, by a country mile.

Why is that so? Well to cut right through, the one reason I can highlight, in the context of Anne Henderson’s book, is because of the education that was conferred on so many people who would not have got that education but for the setting up of an adequate government school system in the colonies, and later the states. But the competition edge and the further extension of that came with by the early establishment of a non-government school system, including the Catholic church school system. This was one which Mary MacKillop spearheaded especially in many poor suburbs and many remote areas of Australia. In other words, that activity and that template allowed people a high jump of opportunity.

Australia is not stratified, as some of the countries nearby to my posting are, and you don’t have to go to a particular university after university to get an elite job in the public service as you do in yet another country near where I am currently posted. Because of this, the quality foundation education conferred by the Sisters of St Joseph’s, many recorded brilliantly in this book, thousands more Australians were able to perform and create a family and provide for that family, and provide for the education of their children. Thus, the dynamic of Australia in the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century expanded. And at a time when the communication systems did not exist as they do today, and where there were many direct and indirect challenges to be faced.

So I take this opportunity, as an Australian first and foremost but also as Australian Ambassador to the Holy See, to salute the determination, the dedication, the devotion and the contribution that the Sisters of St Joseph, and their foundation leader Mary MacKillop, have made to education in Australia – directly to so many, but by its very existence and its template, indirectly to so many others in government and non-government school systems. The result – we live in an awesome country. Here we have space – every street in the cranky layout of Sydney is wider than the Via Corso through the heart of Rome, let me assure you. It may be congested in Sydney, but it’s still wider than the Via Corso. But we also have opportunity, and to create and take up on that opportunity you need education.

I am delighted that this theme and this dimension emerges along with so many others, which time does not allow for me to develop, in this excellent publication Mary MacKillop’s Sisters – A life unveiled under the auspices of The Sydney Institute. I have much pleasure in declaring the book by Anne Henderson relaunched.

ANNE HENDERSON – A RESPONSE

Well thank you Tom Fischer

Australia and Mary MacKillop deserve all you can deliver in Rome!

Today is quite remarkable. Consider. Here we are, at The Sydney Institute. With a saint. An Australian saint.

No, not Tim Fischer!

That’s some achievement for such a secular nation.

For many, the Institute is regarded as a city business forum, where ideas at the forefront of Australian debate are presented.

Even the scheduling of this event is indicative of this.

Mary MacKillop was something of a trailblazer. One most of us could never compete with.

Today’s book launch and talk has come between a seminal address by Fred Hilmer on microeconomic reform on Tuesday and a talk to come this evening by Treasurer Wayne Swan on Labor’s economic plans for the future.

What a contrast. Or so it would seem.

In fact, where productivity assessments are concerned, Mary MacKillop was something of a trailblazer. One most of us could never compete with.

Imagine any business where it could be said that it saved the Australian taxpayer tens of billions of dollars in today’s currency.

But that’s what the “Brown Josephites”, along with other religious Australian establishments of the last century, achieved. They set up and ran schools and institutions taking care of children, the sick and the orphaned, and so on. They did the work of government today – and all for nothing more than their keep in convents and community houses, where often they had little food and relied on charity to continue.

Mary MacKillop did not set out to save Australian taxpayers all this money. But, in her quest to answer the call that she believed was so important to her life, that’s what she did.

We are here today for Mary MacKillop, and much more. Because it was the work of her sisters, the women of her order of Josephite nuns, that carried her name into our own era.

It was her sisters who continued her calling and built her vision, who worked for her recognition and who have brought us the legacy that Australians are about to celebrate in Mary MacKillop’s canonisation in Rome.

The work of religious educators in Australia, that army of brothers and sisters who worked for no salary in Catholic schools for over a century from the late nineteenth century, was principally conceived to include religious instruction alongside regular education. To teach a belief in God as part of a whole being.

But it should not be forgotten that the schools these women and men established also brought education to thousands who might not have stayed at school.

Starting in a stable fitted out as a makeshift classroom, Mary MacKillop left behind 12,400 children being taught in her 117 schools supported by 109 houses staffed by 650 sisters of St Joseph across Australia and New Zealand. This did not include her refuges and orphanages.

No less dramatic, however, are the stories of her many sisters. But theirs are a vast anecdote of patchwork, in time and personality and experience.

From this beginning, the order grew to be the largest, centrally governed order of religious in Australia.

The story of Mary MacKillop has been told and retold in volumes of history, plays, comic books, colouring books, on cloth and tea towels, in film and documentary and even as a musical.

It is a story that is linear, chronological and dramatic, a single life of wide experience.

No less dramatic, however, are the stories of her many sisters. But theirs are a vast anecdote of patchwork, in time and personality and experience.

How to take the regulation and practice of one century into another with all the change that came in a hundred years? How would those who knew Mother Mary pass on the “cross” she bore but adapt also to the changes around them. Big changes.

And then, how to keep the spirit of Mother Mary alive in times when it was such a struggle, while at other times there was much rejoicing, success and material advance. And to do this in ways Mother Mary could never have dreamed.

But, they did it.

More than a decade ago, I spent a couple of years sitting down with some 40 of Mary MacKillop’s sisters. I listened to their stories. They took me across Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Some of my interviewees are dead now, but their stories live on.

They gave their lives to others – in ways none of us can truly understand.

Nearly all left their families in their teenage years and joined the organisation that Mary MacKillop had founded. Some left Ireland at this tender age, with no full comprehension that they probably would never see their families again.

They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They lived where they were sent in large and small communities of sisters. They gave their lives to others – in ways none of us can truly understand.

Their story is the story of Mary MacKillop.

Their story is also the story of Australia.

I am thankful to HarperCollins for the foresight to reissue the stories in this book – indeed it gives an account of many lives “unveiled”.

And to Tim Fischer, a very heartfelt thanks – what an ambassador for the sisters in Rome.

And thank you all for joining us today for this special celebration.