Saintly link for city Mum

Published: 12 September 2010
By: Paul Dobbyn

Link to saint: Elizabeth Cleary, who is related to Blessed Mary MacKillop, holds a photograph she discovered among family documents. Picture: Michael Kirby

BRISBANE woman Elizabeth Cleary was a primary school student when she discovered Blessed Mary MacKillop was a relative.

Since then Elizabeth has been on a journey of discovery into her family's history particularly that of her increasingly famous relative.

This includes an investigation into a photograph of Mary MacKillop which she found several weeks ago amongst old family documents.

Elizabeth was also interested to learn Mary MacKillop had a brother, Jesuit priest Donald, ahead of his time in advocating indigenous rights while stationed in the Northern Territory in the 1880s and 1890s.

Her father, the late Dr Joe McKillop, as a boy also met the Australian holy woman at her order's North Sydney convent. (Elizabeth's side of the family spelt McKillop without an "a".)

Elizabeth's first memory of discovering the connection was as a young girl in Brisbane.

"I remember my father talking about Mary MacKillop when my sister, Kathryn and I were at primary school," Elizabeth said.

"It was something relatives later often spoke of too, and the nuns at school.

"As children we were a bit unsure of how we were related to Mary, but asked more questions as we got older.

"Our grandfather, Lachlan Peter McKillop and Mary were first cousins.

"Their fathers, Alexander and Duncan, were brothers."
In time, Elizabeth's father came to increasingly discuss that "Mary might be made a saint".

"Dad often visited the Sisters of St Joseph here in Brisbane and I would think this was frequently spoken of," Elizabeth said.

Mary MacKillop's beatification ceremony at Randwick in 1995 really highlighted her relative's importance.

"We realised then that she was venerated by many other religious denominations, as well as Catholic," Elizabeth said.

"It really struck us that she was a person so ahead of her time, and someone who had touched the lives of many in the early days of settlement."

Just recently Elizabeth discovered a photograph of Mary MacKillop in a folder located in a box full of old family documents.

The photograph is oval and the folder bears the name of a now defunct Brisbane photographic studio F. W. Thiel and the word "copy".

Elizabeth has a theory that it may have belonged to her uncle.

"Uncle Lockie travelled overseas a lot ... maybe he took the photo to show the relatives in Scotland when he visited there in the 1930s and '40s."

Meanwhile Elizabeth has passed the photograph on to Josephite Sisters in Brisbane in the hope more light may be cast on its origins.

Elizabeth is also concerned to bring to light the work of Blessed Mary's little known brother, Jesuit Father Donald MacKillop.

"Donald spent a decade or so around (Daly River) in what must have been incredibly difficult conditions in those days," she said. "He was far ahead of his time in his advocacy for indigenous Australians which is contained in his letters to the authorities of the day."

Elizabeth said she was eagerly looking forward to the canonisation of her famous relative and that she, her husband Peter and several family members, including sister Kathryn, would be attending the October 17 ceremony in Rome.