How humble Mary MacKillop, the daughter of Scots emigrants, became Australia's first saint

SHE was the daughter of 19th-century Scots emigrants who dedicated her life to religious service and the needs of the poor, yet still found herself briefly excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

• Mary MacKillop

But now Mother Mary MacKillop, the nun credited with spreading Roman Catholicism across Australia and New Zealand, has been approved for sainthood.

Pope Benedict XVI made the announcement yesterday during a ceremony at the Vatican, and set the formal canonisation for 17 October in Rome.

The confirmation of Australia's first saint, more than a century after her death, has been warmly welcomed worldwide, from the office of the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd through to Roy Bridge, the Lochaber village which Mother Mary's parents called home.

Father Tom Wynne, the parish priest at Roy Bridge, told The Scotsman he was "greatly excited" by the official confirmation.

He maintains a shrine to Mother Mary at Roy Bridge's St Margaret's Church, which attracts many visitors from Australia.

• Full list of figures approved for sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI

Upon hearing yesterday's news, around 25 people from the village near Fort William are planning to travel to Rome for the canonisation. Among those who will attend is the Right Rev Joseph Toal, Bishop of Argyll & the Isles, a distant relative of Mother Mary.

However, Fr Wynne stressed that "many" people in the area can claim links to Mother Mary, the son of Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald.

Fr Wynne said: "Even when she was criticised and excommunicated by the church, she never had a word of criticism for the clergy. She thought it was God's doing, and she lived a very humble life.

"She allowed children in the Australian outback to be taught, what she did for the country's education was immense."

He added: "There's a great affinity for her in Scotland, and she's very much part of life in the parish. She visited Roy Bridge in the 1870s and instantly felt the place was familiar because her mother had told her so much about it."

Born in Melbourne in 1842, the eldest of eight children, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph, an order that built dozens of schools for impoverished children across the Australian outback in the 1800s, as well as orphanages and clinics for the needy.

She was a strong-willed advocate who sometimes got into trouble for challenging orthodox thinking within the male- dominated church. In 1869 she was excommunicated for inciting her followers to disobedience, though the bishop who punished her recanted three years later and she was exonerated by a church commission.

At the time of her death in 1909, she led some 750 nuns and ran a network of 117 schools. She was beatified in 1995 by Pope John Paul II, who said a woman had been cured of terminal leukaemia in 1961 after praying to her.

In Australia, Mr Rudd said the announcement represented an "honour" for his nation. "This is a great, great tribute to the Catholic Church and a great, great tribute to her hard work in education," he said. "This is a great honour for Australia. I offer a heartfelt expression of appreciation to the wider Catholic community."

Australians have been eagerly awaiting the announcement since December, when Pope Benedict recognised a second miracle – one of the final steps in the complex process before sainthood can be bestowed – in the form of the cure of an Australian great-grandmother, Kathleen Evans, from inoperable cancers in her brain and lungs.

"All I had left was prayer. I was a great believer in prayer," said the 66-year-old, who has been given the all-clear by doctors. "Instead of my health deteriorating, I started to get strong. I was even able to stay out of bed longer."

Garry McLean, head of the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre in Melbourne, said: "It's more than just Catholics, the whole country has a new hero – someone that will give them hope for the future."