Mary MacKillop's Significant Contributions towards Establishing the Catholic Church in Colonial Australia'
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She was born
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Celebrates her first Holy Communion on August 15.
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Becomes governess to the children of her uncle, Alexander Cameron, at Penola in South Australia, where she meets Father Julian Tenison Woods, who becomes her spiritual guide.
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Takes a job as a teacher at Portland Catholic Denominational School.
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Along with Father Woods, starts the first free Catholic school in Penola, at first in a stable and later in a more substantial stone building.
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Joins with Father Woods to form a new religious order of nuns, the Sisters of St Joseph, devoted to teaching the poor, with Mary as mother superior; opens a convent-cottage and a school in Adelaide; takes her religious vows on August 15.
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Takes her final vows on December 8; and leaves for Queensland to open schools there.
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Mary returns to Australia with 15 Irish postulations, following travels in Europe to visit schools.
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Mary is elected as the first superior general of the Sisters of St Joseph.
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Mary suffered a stroke in 1902 and was an invalid until her death on August 8, 1909.
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Mary MacKillop's first miracle, the 1961 cure of leukemia in another woman,
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In February 2010, after evaluating the testimony of an Australian woman who claimed that her terminal cancer had disappeared after she called upon MacKillop in prayer, Pope Benedict XVI recognized MacKillop as a saint. She was canonized that October.
