Our Saints

On 15 January, 1842, in Fitzroy, Melbourne (VIC), Mary was born to Flora and Alexander MacKillop, who were immigrants from Scotland. She was baptised "Maria Ellen," although she was always known as Mary. She was the eldest of eight children and was raised in the working-class in Victoria. 

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Mary later said that her childhood had been unhappy, yet she had always felt the Holy Spirit with her: "From early childhood, as far
back as I can remember, He gave me such a sense of His watchful presence that I would feel myself reproved for my smallest faults."
At age 14, Mary took up the position of a clerk for Sands and Kenny stationers in Melbourne.

She once wrote that: "Until I was twenty-five,  I had the principle care of a large family." Reflecting upon her early life, Mary said of her father, "From my father I learnt so much. He had studied for seven years in Rome alone, and under the Jesuit Fathers."