Conversation: Fr Paul Gardiner, postulator for the cause of Blessed Mary MacKillop - Lack of ‘miracle culture’ delays Mary’s sainthood

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16 November 2003

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Conversation: Fr Paul Gardiner, postulator for the cause of Blessed Mary MacKillop - Lack of ‘miracle culture’ delays Mary’s sainthood

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Conversation: Fr Paul Gardiner, postulator for the cause of Blessed Mary MacKillop - Lack of ‘miracle culture’ delays Mary’s sainthood

ABSORBING: Fr Paul Gardiner, postulator for Mary MacKillop

By Chris Lindsay

Vatican bureaucracy, recalcitrant doctors, red tape and “the lack of a culture of miracles in Australia” are all combining to delay the canonisation of Bl Mary MacKillop, says Jesuit priest Fr Paul Gardiner, the postulator for Mary MacKillop’s cause.

By contrast, the active support of Pope John Paul II has fast-tracked the sainthood of Mother Teresa - largely because she is an international figure.

According to Church rules, one clear-cut miracle is needed for beatification and a second for sainthood.

Mary MacKillop has her first miracle and there are many potential candidates for the second. But, says Fr Paul, “it is easier to have a miracle than to prove one”.

Miracles do not, in theory, have to be medical cures, but in practice that is what happens because the Church is reluctant to accept psychological ones, such as a conversion to the faith.

In any claimed medical miracle attributed to Mary MacKillop, the question Fr Paul must ask the doctors concerned is: “Can you explain, in the light of your medical knowledge, what happened here?”

However, he says, it is very difficult to get Australian doctors to say they cannot explain a medical phenomenon.

“In one case, we had a young boy, who was given up as untreatable with a brain tumour,” he says. “After treatment he was worse, so they stopped treatment and sent him home for palliative care, and basically to die. ‘There is nothing we can do’, the doctors said.

“However after novenas and other prayers to Mary MacKillop, he recovered.

“When I consulted with independent medical professors and specialists (who had not treated him) and asked their opinion, they said: ‘Well, some doctors may say the little boy was dying but it could have been the treatment that was killing him and not the disease. And we couldn’t say they were wrong’.

“There have been other cases where the doctors simply won’t co-operate because they ‘don’t believe in miracles’.

“But they are never asked: ‘Is this a miracle, doctor?’ They are simply asked: ‘Can you explain what happened?’

“In Australia it is very difficult to get doctors to admit that they can’t explain a cure. It is part of their professional attitude. We don’t live in a miracle culture where that is an acceptable explanation.

“The doctors know what you are after when you are speaking to them and they think their replies are scientific, but it is not scientific to block your mind off from possibilities. Doctors will say a medical outcome is ‘unexpected’ or ‘surprising’ but they will not say they can’t explain it.

“So the state of play is that we have an office full of files, of letters and submissions and reports regarding miracles or answers to prayers, and we are sifting through them looking for the one that fully stands up to analysis.

“There is no reason for the people who send this stuff in to be telling lies; they are just saying what happened in their circumstances.

“In some cases we need to get medical evidence, X-rays, slides, scans and have a whole lot of reports.

“The sorts of things we have been dealing with are claims of cures for blindness, leukemia or other cancers.

“The miracle for the beatification occurred in 1961 but it was not proven until 1971. All this was before I came on the scene.

“A young woman in Sydney had acute leukemia, seemed to be cured and then the illness returned. Meanwhile, she became pregnant, which is not a good thing for a leukemia sufferer.

“Nevertheless, a healthy boy was born on August 8, the anniversary of Mary MacKillop’s death - which was merely a coincidence, but nevertheless true - and she had another five children over the next 10 or 11 years.

“The whole thing was medically surprising. But the woman’s name has never been revealed because she wanted her privacy respected, which is her right.

“Some people’s lives can be destroyed by these kinds of things, with the media and other people constantly harassing them.”

But, if dealing with doctors is difficult, getting the process of canonisation under way is a labyrinth.

If someone is proposed for sainthood - perhaps, as in Mary MacKillop’s case, by the religious order they belonged to - a ‘postulator’ must be appointed. The postulator looks after the case for sainthood.

The Vatican also appoints someone to ensure the case is watertight, a ‘relator’. The relator in this case is, coincidentally, also a Jesuit, German priest Fr Peter Gumpel.

“It is not a fight, both sides work together,” says Fr Paul. “The adversarial system, the old ‘Devil’s Advocate’ (known as the ‘Promoter of the Faith’) was got rid of in 1983.”

But it is not as simple as appointing a postulator and a relator and letting them work it out.

To initiate the investigation into a candidate for sainthood a proposal is put to the Vatican by the people behind the cause, in this case the Josephite Sisters.

Fr Paul says: “I was asked to go to Rome in 1983 to prepare the history of the case, the ‘position’.

“It was a huge task and took six years. It required a full history of the person, all that happened in her life and all the problems.

“After I had been working on this for some time, I was asked in 1985 to be the postulator as the previous one did not speak English.

“The best thing about being a postulator was it gave you a bit of status in the Vatican. When you went to see someone and they asked ‘who are you’ it was a help to say: ‘I am the postulator’.

“There was a huge mountain of documents to go through. Most were at the Josephite centre in Mount St, North Sydney, but there were also some in Adelaide, and some in the archives of the De Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith).

“In the Josephite material there was a great amount of material based on the interrogation of witnesses to Mary’s life (she died in 1909). In 1926 a lot of people who had known her were interviewed, some for several sessions.

“I had to write a unified account of Mary MacKillop. It was a very absorbing and demanding task. She comes out as a wonderful, holy, kindly, good woman, but not all those associated with her come out quite so well.

“The final product was a huge work in three volumes. However once it was finished, the fun started.

“I had to submit it to the Holy See, and then, the theory is, they will set a date for a meeting when they will consider it.

“We had to hand in 50 copies and then they select 10 people to act as a panel of judges, a board of consultors, mainly archbishops and cardinals, but others can be brought in for particular reasons.

“The idea is that they read it and make comments on Mary MacKillop; however, they can’t criticise it once it has been accepted by the relator. The documents have to show that the person is ‘heroically holy’, has ‘heroic virtue’.

“This has to be proven by adversity. They are looking for evidence of her union with God, how she handled a crisis. You don’t beat the drum; you tell the story truly.

“The problem was that there are only about 10 meetings a year and a massive list of people to be considered. ... Our problem was that we were being ignored. Fr Gumpel urged me to get Cardinal Clancy to speak to the Pope personally about it. And the result was that we got a date late in 1992.

“We had the meeting and it went through OK, Mary MacKillop was then approved for canonisation and from that time forward she could be called ‘venerable’.

“Following this there is a meeting with the Pope and others involved in the cause, including officials of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a Vatican department. There might be 40 or 50 people there.

“At this point it is signed and sealed for canonisation. Then it is time to go to work on the miracles.”

The problem with working in this area, he says, is that “we are working with the spirit of God, something that is beyond the world’s grasp ... it is the divine area we are working in. There are difficulties in dealing with God’s business.

“I have been urged to ‘get on with it’ but it is a divine thing. We can’t call it a miracle unless the Church says it is.”

Fr Paul said that while the canonisation of Mary MacKillop was taking time it was not particularly slow.

“Joan of Arc died in 1431 and was not canonised until 1920,” he says.

“I have no doubt we will have something, but in God’s own time.”

Fr Paul is the author of Mary MacKillop - an extraordinary Australian.