New shrine to mark saint's Remuera time

Monsignor Brian Arahill next to the shrine to Mary MacKillop at St Michael's Church in Remuera. Photo / Steven McNicholl

A shrine to Saint Mary of The Cross MacKillop was unveiled in Auckland yesterday - celebrated in a song inspired by the nun's deeds and sung by pupils of a school which her religious order established on the site in 1916.

"Never see a need without doing something about it ..." went the song by pupils of St Michael's School, Remuera, performed outside St Michael's Catholic Church, during a sudden lull in the rain.

The shrine bears the image of Mother Mary MacKillop, who founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in 1866.

About 150 sisters of the order, including 14 from New Zealand, and three New Zealand bishops attended the canonisation ceremony at the Vatican last night.

The sisters sponsored Maori Catholics Karen Erueti, of Whanganui, and Richard Puanaki, of St Joseph's School, Wairoa, to attend.

Before the ceremony officiated over by Pope Benedict XVI, Auckland Catholics also joined a procession in Howick to the Church of Our Lady Star of the Sea. In the city, there was a display of relics in St Patrick's Cathedral, including her chair and a piece of the casket in which she was buried in 1909.

The order was committed to educating the needy in rural areas and spread from Australia to New Zealand in 1883.

Its founder visited New Zealand four times.

On a trip to Rotorua in 1902, where she took the thermal waters for rheumatism relief, she had a stroke and was partly paralysed.

Convalescing in Remuera for six months, she forged a strong link with parishioners.

Inscribed around her image on the Remuera shrine are words she wrote in a letter to Bishop George Lenihan in 1905: "I can never forget your kindness especially at Remuera which makes that convent very dear to me."

Parish priest Monsignor Brian Arahill cut the ribbon on the veil jointly with Sister Philomena Turney, a former principal of St Michael's School and a sister of the order for 67 years.

The first reading from the Bible at the mass before the unveiling was by Sister Molly Alexis Thompson, who was taught by sisters of the order during World War II.

She went on to serve the order in rural Australia and New Zealand and retired while teaching at St Joseph's School in Wairoa, northern Hawkes Bay.

Monsignor Arahill hosted a morning tea, welcoming those related to the saint by being a Cameron, McDonald or MacKillop.

Sister Molly revealed that her Australian mother was in a group of pupils taken to "an old nun in a wheelchair who had asked to see the littlies. Guess who it was?

"I didn't know that when I entered the convent. My mother said 'I never told you because I did not want to influence you'."

At the service was Beverley Angland, of Remuera, whose great-grandfather was the saint's first cousin.

"Growing up, we were told about this relative, and her sister Annie stayed with my grandmother in Levin.

"We always knew this [canonisation] would happen at some time."

The order established convent schools throughout New Zealand, including St Michael's on its site in 1916 and St Joseph's in Grey Lynn and St Benedict's in Newton.