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 special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary "dulia" for other saints, but utterly unlike the "latria" due only to God. The term "Mariolatry" is a Protestant pejorative label for perceived excessive Catholic devotion to Mary. Belief in the incarnation of God the Son through Mary is the basis for calling her the Mother of God, which was declared a dogma at the Council of Ephesus in 431. At the Second Vatican Council and in Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Redemptoris mater", she is spoken of also as Mother of the Church. Growth of Roman Catholic veneration of Mary