Mary MacKillop in what is now the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria (at the time part of an area called Newtown in the then British colony of New South Wales), to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald. Although she continued to be known as "Mary", when she was baptised six weeks later she received the names Maria Ellen. MacKillop's parents lived in Roybridge, Inverness-shire, Scotland, prior to emigrating to Australia. MacKillop visited the village in the 1870s where the local Catholic church, St Margaret's, now has a shrine to her. MacKillop's father, Alexander MacKillop, born in Perthshire, had been educated at the Scots
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