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Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ (15 January 1842 – 8 August 1909), now formally known as St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, was an Australian nun who has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church. Of Scottish descent, she was born in Melbourne, but was best known for her activities in South Australia. Together with the Reverend Julian Tenison Woods, she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a congregation of religious sisters that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australasia, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor. With the process to have MacKillop declared a saint having begun in the 1920s, she was beatified in January 1995 by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI prayed at her tomb during his visit to Sydney for World Youth Day 2008 and, in December 2009, approved the Catholic Church's recognition of a second miracle attributed to her intercession. She was canonised on 17 October 2010, during a public ceremony in St Peter's Square at the Vatican. She is the first and only Australian to be recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint. ==Early life and ministry== Mary Helen MacKillop was born on 15 January 1842 in what is now the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria (at the time part of an area called Newtown in the then British colony of New South Wales) to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Although she continued to be known as "Mary", when she was baptised six weeks later she received the names Maria Ellen. MacKillop's parents lived in Roybridge, Inverness-shire, Scotland, prior to emigrating to Australia. MacKillop visited the village in the 1870s where the local Catholic church, St Margaret's, now has a shrine to her. MacKillop's father, Alexander MacKillop, born in Perthshire, had been educated at the Scots College in Rome and at Blairs College in Kincardineshire, for the Catholic priesthood but at the age of 29 left, just before he was due to be ordained. He migrated to Australia and arrived in Sydney in 1838.〔 MacKillop's mother, Flora MacDonald, born in Fort William, had left Scotland and arrived in Melbourne in 1840.〔 Her father and mother married in Melbourne on 14 July 1840. MacKillop was the eldest of their eight children. Her younger siblings were Margaret ("Maggie", 1843–1872), John (1845–1867), Annie (1848–1929), Alexandrina ("Lexie", 1850–1882), Donald (1853–1925), Alick (who died at 11 months old) and Peter (1857–1878).〔 Donald became a Jesuit priest and worked among the Aborigines in the Northern Territory. Lexie also became a Josephite. MacKillop was educated at private schools and by her father. She received her First Holy Communion on 15 August 1850 at the age of eight. In February 1851, Alexander MacKillop left his family behind after having mortgaged the farm and their livelihood and made a trip to Scotland lasting some 17 months. Throughout his life he was a loving father and husband but never able to make a success of his farm. Most of the time the family had to survive on the small wages the children were able to bring home. MacKillop started work at the age of 14 as a clerk in a stationery store in Melbourne.〔 To provide for her needy family, in 1860 she took a job as governess〔(Saint Mary MacKillop ), www.sosj.org.au. Retrieved 20 October 2008〕 at the estate of her aunt and uncle, Alexander and Margaret Cameron in Penola, South Australia where she was to look after their children and teach them.〔 Already set on helping the poor whenever possible, she included the other farm children on the Cameron estate as well. This brought her into contact with Fr Woods, who had been the parish priest in the south east since his ordination to the priesthood in 1857 after completing his studies at Sevenhill. MacKillop stayed for two years with the Camerons before accepting a job teaching the children of Portland, Victoria in 1862. Later she taught at the Portland school and after opening her own boarding school, Bay View House Seminary for Young Ladies, now Bayview College, in 1864,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Bayview College – Home )〕 was joined by the rest of her family. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mary MacKillop」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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