Saints Mary MacKillop and André Bessette

Today Pope Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass of Canonization for Blessed Mary of the Cross MacKillop (1842-1909) and Blessed André Bessette (1845-1937).

At the age of 24, Blessed Mother Mary MacKillop, along with Father Julian Tenison Woods, founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart. In his 1995 beatification homily, Venerable John Paul II preached: "In the vastness of the Australian continent, Blessed Mary MacKillop was not daunted by the great desert, the immense expanses of the outback, nor by the spiritual 'wilderness' which affected so many of her fellow citizens. Rather she boldly prepared the way of the Lord in the most trying situations. With gentleness, courage and compassion, she was a herald of the Good News among the isolated 'battlers' and the urban slum-dwellers. Mother Mary of the Cross knew that behind the ignorance, misery and suffering which she encountered there were people, men and women, young and old, yearning for God and his righteousness. She knew, because she was a true child of her time and place: the daughter of Catholic immigrants from Scotland who had to struggle at all times to build a life for themselves in their new surroundings. Her story reminds us of the need to welcome people, to reach out to the lonely, the bereft, the disadvantaged."
In 1866, she opened a school in a stable and started teaching more than fifty children. In the same year, at age 25, she adopted the religious name Sister Mary of the Cross. In 1867, she became the first sister and mother superior of the newly formed order of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Dedicated to the education of the children of the poor, it was the first religious order to be founded by an Australian. She had complete confidence in Divine Providence.

Born Alfred Bessette Aug. 9, 1845, in Saint-Gregoire d'Iberville, Quebec, he suffered from a chronic stomach ailment that kept him out of school and often without work. At 25, Blessed Andre could not read and his health was so fragile, he entered the Holy Cross brothers. He was assigned as a Holy Cross brother to be the doorman at Montreal's College of Notre Dame, where the congregation had just opened its novitiate. He once commented, "When I joined this community, the superiors showed me the door." For decades, he served as the doorman. He fulfilled this service with great humility. During his lifetime, numerous cures were attributed to his prayers. His great confidence in Saint Joseph inspired him to recommend this saint's devotion to all those who were afflicted in various ways. On his many visits to the sick in their homes, he would recommend them in prayer to St. Joseph, and would anoint them lightly with oil from the lamp in the college chapel which always burned before the St. Joseph altar. People claimed that they had been cured through the prayers of the good Brother and Saint Joseph, and they were grateful their prayers had been heard. Brother André steadfastly refused to take any credit for these cures. Because he wanted St. Joseph to be honored, in 1904 Bessette began the campaign to erect a chapel to honor the saint. He raised funds for the construction of Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, a shrine that would in time become Canada’s largest church. Deeply devoted to Saint Joseph, Blessed Bessette founded Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal and was known for his intense piety, famed for miraculous cures and praised for his dedication to building the shrine to honor St. Joseph. He died Jan. 6, 1937, at the age of 91.

Saint Mary of the Cross and Saint André Bessette, pray for us.