Bishops regret...
PERTH, WA: November 21, 1991
Registered by Australia Post Publication No. WAR 0202
Number 2765
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JAKARTA, (CNS): The Indonesian bishops expressed concern and deep regret over a bloody incident November 12 in Dili, East Timor, in which army units killed mourners in a cemetery. In a statement the Indonesian bishops' conference said the church "as a religious institution that stresses the teaching of love, peace and humanity, deeply regrets the incident" that claimed so many lives. The bishops will continue to follow and study the development of the situation and problems related to it. They also called on all parties to be calm.
We need her now At South Perth this week, Sr Joan Thompson (left) hears from St Frances Maguire the good news that Mary MacKillop is eligible for eventual recognition as a saint by the Catholic Church. Sister Maria Casey (right) the provincial leader is holding two of the three volumes read by the theologians and which now have to be studied by five cardinals before recommending to Pope John Paul some time next year that she be declared venerable.
Mary MacKillop would be more than equal to the challenges of Western Australia today, say her spiritual daughters and supporters at
South Perth.
For Australia's possible future saint WA was the only state she did not visit but she would have had a message for today's times, says the provincial congregational leader, Sister Maria Casey. Recession hardships, WA Inc materialism, use of the media, ecumenism, feminism, family support and Aboriginal care are all issues to which Mother Mary would have responded, says Sister Maria. "She was an extraordinary woman. She went herself to far flung outposts and when her sisters went to Kalgoorlie and Boulder they followed the mining settlements, living in hessian tents.
"She was part of the quite at home on televipeople wherever they sion," Sr Maria said. were, sharing their povSister Frances Maguire erty, their joys and believes that Mother sorrows." Mary would be standing In today's recession she by the families and would be with the suffer- destitute women of ing rural families giving today. them support and "She visited families in Sr their homes and encourencouragement, Maria says. aged the sisters to do But she would be a sign likewise. She gave a of hope that there are home to girls from more things to life than Ireland with no place to material values. stay. When women had a "With WA Inc revealing hard time on the streets them problems at every level she would collect everbody not and she would be in there with the families who are approved of that" Mother Mary might not suffering but not standing for the material have classed herself a values that have led to feminist, says Sister the situation," Sr Maria Maria but she had a strong conviction of said. giving her congregation a top a was Mary Mother communicator in her control of women by letters and in her setting women. correspondence up Only by resisting the schools and she would efforts of bishops to have have been at home in the direct control did she feel media opportunities that she would be able to available today. send her sisters to wher"She would have been ever they were needed.
But she was loyal to bishops and gave up many things dear to her in negotiations with Rome. "She was a professional woman, setting up the first Australian-founded teacher-training program whereas other orders were using personnel trained in Europe and elsewhere." As an ecumenist her best friends and supporters were non-Catholics. When she was without a home in Adelaide, the Solomon family, later carpet fame, took her in. When she needed a place to prepare a group of men for confirmation she had no hesitation in knocking on the door of a North Sydney mansion she knew would have a large drawing room. The owner who granted her suprising request was a non-Catholic. "Although she set up schools for Catholics,
when it came to helping prostitutes and unmarried mothers she invited all regardless." Sr Frances said the five Josephite activities in the Kimberleys and two in the NT plus an Aboriginal school in perth is the work that Mother Mary would have wanted to do for Aborigines even though she just missed out on establishing a Daly River mission in her day. Likewise would the farflung Josephite works of today appeal to the foundress, the late Sr Irene in Peru and Sr Edith Prince of Perth who is still there. Today's missions at Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie, at Tom Price and Esperance where former mother-general Sr Elizabeth travels up to 10001un weekly are in the mould of Mother Mary.
Involvement in the Perth migration office would correspond to her multi-cultural views. It is thought Mother Mary may have stepped ashore briefly at Albany en route to Europe but for over a century her sisters have reached far into WA reaching a peak of 120 sisters across some 25 schools in the 1960s. Before the Josephite diocesan groups had amalgamated by 1912 they had been since 1887 at Northampton and Geraldton, at lost towns like Karnhallie (11 yrs) and Brown Hill (14) through to Southern Cross eventually (83 yrs), then on to places like New Norcia (69), Boulder (66), Kellerberrin (52, 47) through the South West to recent activities at La Salle and Corpus Christi Colleges and the primary school in Ballajura community recently given Mother Mary's name.