THE preliminary phase of the cause for canonisation of another Australian has been opened – that of Catholic Women’s League co-founder Mary Glowrey.
Dr Glowrey organised her fellow medical students against practices she describes as “contrary to natural law”: such practices included sterilisation of the poor and the “benign neglect” of disabled babies. She also wrote a booklet for Archbishop Thomas Carr (Melbourne) against infanticide.
Dr Anna Krohn, CWL Bioethics Convenor and Committee member for the Cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey, said in an exclusive column for The Record on Page 5 that Glowrey was also a “prophetic leader”.
“She realised, decades before, what Pope John Paul II would write in his Letter to Women and his Encyclical Evangelium Vitae: that it would be the ‘genius’ of women which would lead in the building up of a culture of life,” said Dr Krohn, who is also Academic Skills Advisor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family and a Tutor in Nursing Ethics and Spirituality at Australian Catholic University.
Dr Glowrey left her thriving Ear, Nose and Throat specialist career in Melbourne to be a medical missionary for the poor in India.
Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart announced on 2 December that the preliminary phase of her canonisation cause – a careful evaluation of her work and writings, together with her religious life – has started in Bangalore, India.
Dr Glowrey left Melbourne in 1920 aged 33 to join the Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a Dutch Order of Religious Sisters, and worked in India as a medical missionary until her death in 1957.
The Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga, which holds more than 80 per cent of Mary Glowrey’s personal writings, has been working closely with the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in India for the past two years preparing for the commencement of her cause.
The Archbishop of Bangalore, Dr Bernard Moras, appointed Fr Paul Puthanangady on 11 November to assist and guide the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the preparation of all documents and records needed in the preliminary phase of her cause.
People are not canonised for their works, however, but for their holiness. Sr Glowrey was known never to attempt anything without praying to the Holy Spirit, knowing that with His help all things are possible. At her Requiem Mass, the Bishop of Guntur described Sr Glowrey as a “special creation of God … a great soul who embraced the whole world.”
People are not canonised for their works, however, but for their holiness. Sr Glowrey was known never to attempt anything without praying to the Holy Spirit, knowing that with His help all things are possible. At her Requiem Mass, the Bishop of Guntur described Sr Glowrey as a “special creation of God … a great soul who embraced the whole world.”
For the last two years of her life, she shouldered the Cross of excruciating physical pain which she bore with extraordinary courage and patience. Her last words were: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” and “My Jesus, I love you”.
Born the third of nine children in 1887 in Birregurra, 135km west of Melbourne, she studied medicine at Melbourne University. In the fourth year of her course she joined St Vincent’s Hospital and graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. She did her residency in New Zealand and returned to Melbourne in 1912 and held positions at the Eye and Ear Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital.
By 1914 she had a successful practice at 82 Collins Street, where her religious vocation came in 1915 after attending Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral.
During a chance reading of a pamphlet about the appalling death rate amongst babies in India and the need there for medical missionaries, she fell to her knees and knew that God, whose will she had constantly sought to do since an early age, was calling her to a life of medical mission work in India. She would wait until after the end of World War I before being able to travel to India.
In 1916, she was elected the first General President of the newly formed Catholic Women’s Social Guild (now the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga.) Mary Glowrey also studied for a higher medical degree in obstetrics and gynaecology and was conferred as a Doctor of Medicine in December 1919.
In 1920, she left her thriving career as an ear, nose and throat specialist and, surrendering herself completely to God’s will, she sailed for India.
“She placed the remainder of her life at the service of the medical and spiritual needs of the people of India, as an expression of her own deeply held love for God and for humanity,” a Melbourne Archdiocese statement said.
“She had a deep love for the people of India and their culture. She studied and made extensive use of traditional Indian medicines.”
She began her work in a small dispensary in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, 1,600km south of India’s capital New Delhi. This dispensary grew into St Joseph’s Hospital.
Recognising the vital need to promote the Christian use of medicine, she founded the Catholic Hospital Association of India (CHAI) in 1943, with the aim of establishing a Catholic Medical College in India to train health professionals whose medical care would be grounded in an understanding of the absolute inviolability of human life and placed at the service of life.
Archbishop Hart told The Herald Sun last week: “Mary Glowrey was a gifted doctor, Religious and missionary.
“Her tireless work for humanity and her deep religious faith make her an ideal person whose cause for holiness should be investigated.”
However, contrary to The Herald Sun’s 4 December report, Mary spent almost 37 years in Guntur, not Bangalore, as was reported.
Only the last few months of her life were in Bangalore.
She also did not go to Sydney after graduating from university, as the Melbourne-based newspaper reported – she went to New Zealand, the CWL confirmed to The Record.
In 1967, 10 years after her death, St Johns Medical College was built in Bangalore.
Fr Dan Strickland, a former Albany resident and now priest of the Association of Christ’s Faithful called the Missionaries of God’s Love, also wrote the prayer, printed above left, for the cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey’s canonisation to be used on a holy card, which has been reprinted above.
The MGLs now have the care of St Benedict’s in Narrabundah where the Australian Chapter of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph Sisters once lived.
Ten Sisters first arrived in Australia from the Dutch Order in 1960.
They taught at St Benedict’s when the Good Samaritan Sisters who were teaching there were entrusted with another school in the suburbs of Canberra.
The JMJ Sisters extended their mission to Blackburn South, then Mary’s Hill in Mooralbark.
A rapid change in the Catholic education system saw more lay Catholics teaching; many Dutch sisters went back to Holland and they had to close down their convents due to a sudden drop in vocations and ageing Sisters.
Thus, the history of JMJ in Australia was closed by the end of 1982.
Copies of the prayer for her cause are available online at the Archdiocese of Melbourne website: www.cam.org.au/news/mary-glowrey-cause-for-canonisation-begins.html.
Alternatively, people can write to CWL to request a prayer card and enclose a self-addressed and stamped DL envelope:
Committee for the Cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey
Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga
Mary Glowrey House
132-134 Nicholson St
Fitzroy VIC 3065 Australia