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MacKillop banished after uncovering sex abuse
Mary MacKillop, the nun who will soon be Australia's first saint, was excommunicated by the Catholic Church because she discovered children were being abused by a priest and went public, the ABC's Compass program can reveal.
In 1871, after only four years as a nun, she was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church and turned out onto the street with no money and nowhere to go.
MacKillop's cause for sainthood began in 1925 and has had the tireless backing of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the order she founded.
On October 17, MacKillop's canonisation by Pope Benedict XVI will be a momentous occasion for Australia's 5 million Roman Catholics.
But these new revelations show there were some in the church who set out to destroy the order that put her on the path to sainthood.
While serving with the Sisters of St Joseph, MacKillop and her fellow nuns heard disturbing stories about a priest, Father Keating from the Kapunda parish north of Adelaide, who was allegedly abusing children.
They told their director, a priest called Father Woods, who then went to the Vicar General.
The Vicar General subsequently sent Father Keating back to his home country of Ireland, where he continued to serve as a priest.
Father Paul Gardiner, who has pushed for MacKillop's canonisation for 25 years, says Father Keating's fellow Kapunda priest Father Horan swore revenge on the nun for uncovering the abuse.
"The story of the excommunication amounts to this: that some priests had been uncovered for being involved in the sexual abuse of children," he said.
"The nuns told him and he told the Vicar General who was in charge at the time and he took severe action.
"And Father Horan, one of these priests, was so angry with this that he swore vengeance - and there's evidence for this - against Woods by getting at the Josephites and destroying them."
Father Horan was by now working for Adelaide's Bishop Shiel and urged him to break the sisters up by changing their rules.
When MacKillop refused to comply, she was banished from the church at the age of 29.
"Mary was not excommunicated, in fact or in law. She submitted to a farcical ceremony where the Bishop had ... lost it," Father Gardiner said.
"He was a puppet being manipulated by malicious priests. This sounds terrible but it's true."
Five months later Bishop Shiel was gravely ill and dying. From his deathbed he instructed that MacKillop be absolved and restored.
A statement from the Sisters of St Joseph says the events of September 1871 have "been comprehensively documented".
"There were several factors that led to this painful period for Mary and the sisters," the statement said.
"The reasons for Mary's excommunication have been written about and commented on in the public domain since that time. This is consistent with the information contained in the Compass program."
In 2009, 100 years after MacKillop's death, Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson publicly apologised to the Sisters of St Joseph for Mary's wrongful excommunication.
"On behalf of myself and the archdiocese I apologise to the sisters, especially 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 and that this was a terrible thing," he said.
ABC's Compass program containing the revelations and the story of Mary MacKillop's life will screen on Sunday October 10 , a week before the historic canonisation ceremony.
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We
have here also Bishops (Robinson), Priests (Thomas Doyle) and Nuns
(Monastery of Our Lady of Little Citeaux), Peter Kennedy was stripped of his priesthood and now, the Vatican's decision to remove Bishop William Morris as the Bishop of Toowoomba in Queensland and so many more, whom we now
know about and who have been kicked out of the catholic church, because
they have seen and taken the part of the innocent children, who were
sexual abused within the catholic church and they too, need to be
apologized to and given back what was ripped, off them, without their
concent.
They are men and women like Mary MacKillop and they
too, are innocent of any crime or reason, why they were excommunicated,
from their Vocation, in doing the work of Jesus Christ, in helping the
children of God, who were and had being abused and sexual abused by
their very own, priest, monks and nuns of the catholic church, and now
they too should be given a public apology, so these good people can do
the work they so loved, in protecting children from the wolves of the
dark, to bring them back, to the light of Jesus Christ, to set them free
of their pain and torment, which the catholic church did to them. Ann
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Eucharist
VI. John 6:53-58, 66-67
"So
Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he
who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will
raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood
is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me
and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the
Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread
which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he
who eats this bread will live forever.' After this many of his disciples
drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve,
'Will you also go away?'"
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You have defrocked the wrong priest and nuns, the only wrong they have done, was to do the work of Jesus Christ, by saving His innocent children from the jaws of the demons of the sexual abusers of your church, who you have lifted up and protected, under your wings and turned the only good Shepherd's of Jesus Christ, who dare to stand by the weak, disabled, defenceless, homeless children, of the catholic church, away from your eyes and ears, so you would not hear about the truth which was scanning, the very heart of that catholic church, and you did not want to see or hear the cries of your children, who call you from the depths of their despair of the hell, which they can not see away out of.
Now it is up to us to keep standing by these good men and women, and to enlighten the church and make her hear us, that these people have done nothing wrong. Ann
"You can abuse my body,
You can harm my mind,
But you can't harm my Soul.
That is mine,
which belongs to God"
Ann Thompson.