Rome, Italy, Oct 18, 2010 / 13:58 pm
Efforts to brand the newly canonized St. Mary MacKillop as the "Patron Saint of Whistleblowers in the Church,” are inaccurate and wrong, according to the nun responsible for advancing her sainthood cause.
News media coverage of the Oct. 17 canonization focused almost exclusively on claims made by clergy sexual abuse victims that the new saint had once been excommunicated for exposing abuses by an Irish priest working in Australia.
That claim is false, Sister Maria Casey, RSJ, told Vatican Radio, Oct. 15. “To set the record straight: she herself did not denounce the priest, she was 2,000 miles away when the events were reported."
MacKillop was in fact excommunicated for five months in 1871 by her bishop. But that issue was only “indirectly” related to the Irish priest, she said. At the root of the excommunication was a disagreement over how her new religious order should be governed. The excommunication was lifted after five months in 1872.