The Business of Making Saints

Clip 1: Mary MacKillop

2 min 4 sec ( skip to teachers’ notes)

Taken from the documentary The Business of Making Saints (1994)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG

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Curator’s clip description

Using stills, interviews and voice-over, this clip describes Mary MacKillop as a woman of initiative and leadership, with a vision for providing services to the needy on a national level. Her independence raised the ire and resentment of the bishops of the day.

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows the historic town of Penola in South Australia and the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre. It features interviews with the Ambassador to the Holy See, Michael Tate, and pilgrim Majory Vidot, with narration by Sandy Gore. The story of Mary MacKillop is told through the interviews, which are intercut with historic portrait photographs of contemporary dignitaries from the Roman Catholic Church, voice-over narration and black-and-white archival footage of the Australian countryside in the second half of the 19th century.

Educational value points

  • The clip blends interviews, shots of Penola, archival footage, historic portrait photographs and voice-over narration to tell the story of Mary MacKillop (1842–1909). MacKillop was the first, and remains the only, Australian to be given the title ‘blessed’.
  • Born in Melbourne, MacKillop arrived in Penola in 1861 and worked as a governess and a teacher before becoming a nun. With the assistance of Father Julian Woods, the parish priest, she started the Sisters of Saint Joseph, the first Catholic order to be established by an Australian. She dedicated her life to educating the less privileged. Pope John Paul II beatified MacKillop on 19 January 1995 after Church authorities decreed that, through her prayers to MacKillop, a woman had been cured of cancer.
  • Mary MacKillop opened the Saint Joseph’s School in Penola, the first free Catholic school in Australia, in 1866. MacKillop and other nuns in her order travelled widely and she continued to establish a network of schools throughout Australia and New Zealand. The order of the Sisters of Saint Joseph continues to have an influence on Catholic education both locally and on an international level, where it has established schools and orphanages, and provided education and aid for refugees.
  • The clip highlights the discrimination Mary MacKillop encountered as a woman from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. MacKillop faced significant opposition to her initiatives from the bishops and she was excommunicated by the local diocese. However, after appealing to Rome, she was reinstated and her order was put under the guidance and direction of the Vatican. The Church continues to be criticised for its discriminatory practices against women, particularly in relation to its opposition to women being ordained as clergy and its stance on women’s reproductive rights.
  • The hierarchal constitution and the complex structure of the Roman Catholic Church are revealed in the clip. The Pope is considered the patriarch of the Church. Cardinals are appointed by the Pope as his advisers. Bishops of varying rank typically provide pastoral governance for a diocese, or territorial area. Priests assist bishops and usually work with a particular parish in a bishop’s diocese.
  • Mary MacKillop is the first Australian to reach the third stage in the process of becoming a saint. In 1983 the process, known as canonisation, was reformed by the Church and the four key steps were streamlined. First, the person is proclaimed a Servant of God and detailed information about his or her life is collected. Second, if the evidence produced proves that the candidate has lived a life of ‘heroic virtue’, the Rome-based church body with this responsibility recommends to the Pope that the Servant of God receive the title of Venerable. Third, if the Venerable is considered to be a martyr, or if a miracle has taken place by his or her intercession, he or she becomes blessed. To then become a saint, one more miracle needs to be attributed to the blessed person.
  • The historical town of Penola located approximately 390 km south-east of Adelaide in South Australia is featured in the clip. Penola was settled in 1850 by Scottish-born Alexander Cameron who was a pastoral pioneer. John Riddoch, also Scottish-born, established the Penola Fruit Growing Colony, which was renamed Coonawarra in 1897 and became one of the region’s most prolific wine producers. The Coonawarra region is renowned for its terra rossa soils, a red soil ideal for growing red grape varieties for wine production.
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