Mary MacKillop Mary MacKillop Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ (15 January 1842 – 8 August 1909) was an Australian nun who has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church, as St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. Of Scottish descent, she was born in Melbourne but is best known for her activities in South Australia. Together with the Reverend Julian Tenison Woods, she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a congregation of religious sisters that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor.
Church of the Immaculate Conception (Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana) marble from the reredos (high altar) was used to create an altar, lectern, and a presider's chair in 1986. When the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods arrived in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana in 1840, there was no church on the site, and a log cabin served as its first chapel. Saint Mother Théodore Guérin, the foundress of the order, described the primitive chapel to friends in France, "The Church! Yes, dear friends, that is the dwelling of the God of the Universe, in comparison with which the stables wherein you shelter your cattle are palaces!" The log chapel was dismantled