Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On indulgence: this is a great opportunity to remark in this House about the events of yesterday in Rome where Mary MacKillop was made a saint by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope’s gesture simply formalises what Australian Catholics have known for generations and completes a century-long journey of hope and aspiration for the Australian Catholic community and the Josephite order. The canonisation of our first saint is an historic event for our nation and I think a moment of joy for every Australian.

For the five million Australians of Catholic heritage, it affirms that Mary’s life of self-sacrifice has been deemed worthy of emulation and respect across the globe. For those of us who are not Catholic but respect the place of the church in our nation’s life it is also a moment of great pride, and I got the opportunity to share in that in Melbourne yesterday.

For most people, I suspect, saints are seen as remote figures from ancient times and from very far off lands. Yet Mary was one of us. She inhabited the places we call home: Fitzroy, Penola, Adelaide, North Sydney. She was born in this land, she served in this land and she died in this land. Now her remarkable life has become a gift to the whole world.

A less likely account could hardly be imagined. Here was a young woman with relatively little formal education, few resources and no connections and yet through sheer vision and strength of will she was able to write an amazing chapter in our nation’s history. When she died in 1909 the sisters of St Joseph felt immediately that they had lost a saint and the Australian community knew it had lost a national treasure of rare brilliance.

A century later Mary stands alongside all the great saints of history. Her story of bush schools and fights with clerical bureaucracy are the equal of theirs. Her wisdom and fearless integrity shine clearly across the decades, along with her good-humoured practically and egalitarian decency that so distinctively proclaim that she could have only come from one place, and that is our very own home, Australia, land of the world’s newest saint; a nation today and yesterday united in pride and joy and celebration.

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