http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0928/1224279829336.html
PĂDRAIG COLLINS in Sydney
"THE FOUNDER of the Sisters of St Joseph, who will be canonised as Australia’s first saint next month, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1871 after exposing a paedophile Irish priest, it has been revealed.
Australian television has reported that Sr Mary MacKillop discovered that children were being abused by Fr Patrick Keating in the Kapunda parish near Adelaide in south Australia.
She told Josephites director Fr Julian Tenison-Woods about the abuse. It was then reported to the vicar general and Fr Keating was sent back to Ireland, where he continued to serve as a priest.
Fr Charles Horan, a Galway man who was a colleague of Fr Keating, swore revenge on Sr MacKillop and her order. After only four years as a nun, she was excommunicated by Adelaide’s bishop Laurence Shiel, who was originally from Wexford.
She was turned out on the street with no money and nowhere to go...
..."In 2009, 100 years after Sr MacKillop’s death, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide publicly apologised to the Sisters of St Joseph for her wrongful excommunication.
“On behalf of myself and the archdiocese, I apologise to the sisters . . . for what happened to them in the context of the excommunication, when their lives and their community life was interrupted and they were virtually thrown out on the streets . . . This was a terrible thing,” he said.
After being reinstated by the Catholic Church, Sr MacKillop became known for her work with disadvantaged children, female ex-prisoners and prostitutes.
She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995 following a Vatican decree that in 1961, a Sydney woman was cured of leukaemia through Sr MacKillop’s intercession. The second miracle required for sainthood occurred in the mid-1990s when a woman sent home from hospital to die due to inoperable lung and brain cancer was cured.
The family of Cork man David Keohane, who was beaten almost to death in Sydney in 2008, said his waking from a coma in Cork University Hospital in March last year was due to their praying to Sr MacKillop."
..."Sr MacKillop, who was born in Melbourne to Scottish immigrant parents in 1842 and died in Sydney in 1909, will be canonised by Pope Benedict in Rome on October 17th."
Bridget Mary 's Reflection:
Sister Mary Mackillop of Australia and Sister Theodore Guerin of the United States both were nuns who were excommunicated for standing up and speaking truth to the church authorities and were rewarded for their courageous behavior by excommunication! Mother Theodore was canonized by Pope Benedict in 2005 and now Sister Mary Mackillop will be canonized on Oct. 17,2010. Now there is a lesson for Catholics today. Follow the example of these role models of holiness, peak truth to power, stand up for justice for all God's people, do not fear excommunication. It could put you on the fast track to canonization! So take heart, Roman Catholic Womenpriests and nuns under Vatican inquisition, you could be next on the saints-to-be list! Who says that God does not have a sense of humor!!Bridget Mary Meehan, sofiabmm@aol.com, 703-505-004
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