VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Each of the thousands of pilgrims who flocked to St Peter’s Square on 17 October had a special reason for being there.
Ricky Peterson, a 50 year old man from Kansas City, Kansas, credits the
intercession of Australia’s first saint, Mother Mary MacKillop, with
healing him of Parkinson’s disease 27 months ago.
Before travelling to Australia in 2008, he said he had read about
Blessed MacKillop and prayed that she would be “a travel guide for the
World Youth Day pilgrims” he and his wife brought to Sydney.
Visiting her grave in Sydney on 18 July 2008, “I prayed, ‘Lord, I’ve
asked Mary to pray with me. I’d love nothing more than to leave this
disease and the tremors buried in the soil with Mary, if it is your
will.’”
“We had a 10 minute walk back to the train and it was on the train that I
realised the tremor was gone,” he told Catholic News Service on 17
October in St Peter’s Square.
Peterson said his doctor now thinks the Parkinson’s diagnosis was wrong, “but I know I’ve been healed.”
Peterson has been in contact with the Sisters of St Joseph, the order
founded by St MacKillop, but an earlier healing of an Australian woman
was the miracle used in St MacKillop’s canonisation cause.
Canadian St Andre Bessette, the Holy Cross brother also canonised on 17 October, had a reputation as a healer.
Diane Guillemette from Montreal said that when her mother was 16 years
old “she had a problem with her ear and she went to Brother Andre and he
healed her.”
Guillemette, a member of the Pilgrims of St Michael, a lay missionary
movement, said that for her, “Br Andre is an example of patience,
humility and love of work.”
Sylvia Nazon, a New Yorker now living in Paris, also came to Rome to celebrate St Bessette.
“He was so humble, a wonderful servant of the Lord and even more devoted
to St Joseph than I am,” she said. “I love St Joseph and I took him as a
stepfather for my children when their father died.”
Nazon said she ran across Br Andre while searching the Internet for
information about devotions to St Joseph. “We just got to know each
other in April and I just decided to come to Rome for the canonisation.”
Those devoted to Br Andre gathered on 16 October in Rome’s Basilica of
St Andrew for a prayer vigil and, among the pilgrims who packed the
church to overflowing, was Pierre Homere Belizaire, a young man from
Plaisance, Haiti. “I liked Br Andre for his simplicity,” he said, before
finding a place to pray. Holy Cross Father David Guffey, director of
film, television and video for Family Theatre Productions, was with 150
members of the US Holy Cross Family Ministries’ pilgrimage. He now lives
in Santa Monica, California, but was the director of Andre House, a
soup kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1990-96.
Fr Guffey said St Bessette is a constant reminder “that the simplest act of welcome and hospitality means so much to people.”
In addition to prayer vigils around Rome on 16 October in honour of the
six men and women who were about to be declared saints, the Vatican
Museums and the Australian Embassy to the Holy See organised an evening
of Aboriginal art, music and dance at the museums on 15 October.
The event included the opening of an exhibit, “Rituals of Life,”
featuring objects used in Aboriginal cultural rites, as well as
performances by dancers and musicians from New South Wales and the
Torres Strait and a concert by William Barton, one of Australia’s
best-known didgeridoo players.
The Australian government also parked a consulate camper van near St
Peter’s Square to assist pilgrims during the days surrounding the
canonisation.
Kevin Rudd, Australia’s foreign minister, visited the camper and met
with Australian pilgrims on 16 October. He told them, “This is all about
a singular woman’s life.”
“This is an unconstrained celebration of something that is purely good,”
he said. “It’s not just a line. When you read about this woman’s life,
you see she did more good than all of us together. She was a woman of
guts, courage and determination.”
The Australian pilgrims who gathered by the camper consistently pointed
to St MacKillop’s determination to minister to Catholics in Australia’s
remote outback, even when some Bishops tried to impose a more
traditional way of life on her community.
“She came to Rome to fight for a rule that was very unusual for her
time,” said Josephite Sister Anne Derwin, the congregational leader.
“Our aim is to be very ordinary women out among the people,” just as St
MacKillop was, she said.
Peter Haynes, 26, is an Australian living in England who came to Rome
for the canonisation. He said he studied St MacKillop in primary school
and was impressed by the fact that “she started from nothing and made
something out of it. And her legacy continues today. That’s something.”
His mother, Helen Haynes, came from Australia for the event. She said
she’s impressed at how “she stood up for what she believed in, even as a
woman in front of Bishops.”