Mary MacKillop The process to have MacKillop declared a saint began in the 1920s, and she was beatified in January 1995 by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI prayed at her tomb during his visit to Sydney for World Youth Day 2008 and in December 2009 approved the Catholic Church's recognition of a second miracle attributed to her intercession. She was canonised on 17 October 2010, during a public ceremony in St Peter's Square at the Vatican. She is the first Australian to be recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint. Mary Helen MacKillop was born on 15 January 1842
Veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church centuries, Marian devotions among Roman Catholics have included many examples of personal or collective acts of consecration and entrustment to the Virgin Mary; the Latin terms "oblatio", "servitus", "commendatio", and "dedicatio" were used in this context. Consecration is an act by which a person is dedicated to a sacred service, or an act which separates an object, location or region from a common and profane mode to one for sacred use. The Catholic Church makes it clear that "...the faithful should be carefully instructed about the practice of consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary...it is, in reality, only analogously a