A Saint for Our Times: Nun Denounced Abuse a Century Ago, USA Today, September 30, 2010

A Saint for Our Times: Nun Denounced Abuse a Century Ago

USA Today
September 30, 2010

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/09/saint-catholic-sex-abuse-australian-nun/1

Here's a saint for our times -- a patron and companion in heaven for global victims of the sexual abuse crisis. She could be a 19th century Australian nun, Sister Mary MacKillop, who was once punished by the church for denouncing clerical child abuse.

Francis X. Rocca at Religion News Service picked up the story from a new Australian TV documentary that he says will air next month, a week before Sister MacKillop is canonized in Rome. Rocca writes:

"Some priests had been uncovered for being involved in the sexual abuse of children," the Rev. Paul Gardiner, the official advocate for MacKillop's canonization, told Australia's ABC television.

The story, picked up by the Australian CathNews Agency, says MacKillop reported the child abuse to the vicar-general who took action against the priest.

But, CathNews says,a powerful priest close to the bishop was angry at MacKillop and the whistle blowers in her order that he ...

used his influence over the bishop to manipulate him into throwing the nun out of the church. (The bishop) revoked the punishment on his death bed some five months later.

Already, one U.S. victim, Gary Bergeron, leader of a group organizing a demonstration by victims in St. Peter's Square October. 31, has told Rocca,

Sister Mary understood that the men who were sexually abusing children were just men and were not representing God. Anyone that can be used as an example to protect children is a positive thing. And frankly, we could use all the help we can get."

Part of lengthy process of discerning saints -- proven to be in heaven by their ability to intercede with God to bring forward prayers and petitions -- requires that their lives and writings show heroic virtue.

Rev. James Martin, author of My Life with the Saints, writes at In All Things, the blog for the Jesuit magazine America,

What is more heroic than standing up for a victim?...

It should not be forgotten that she also led a life of founded a religious order, built schools and served the poor. Still, as Martin writes, to name a bold woman religious as a saint,

... says a great deal about sanctity, about sin, about women in the church and, finally, about hope...