Regardless of personal faith-based beliefs, it's always good to see a generous, compassionate, anti-authoritarian honoured. Even if it is a century after their death.
According to this story, something like 6 out of 10 Australians will need little convincing that even in post-life, Mary MacKillop could have been responsible for the minimum two miracles required for sainthood.
David Marr :
Polling over the past decade suggests faith in miracles is intensifying. This may be the work of the late Pope John Paul II, who created armies of fresh saints credited with medical miracles.Mary MacKillop undertaking healings from beyond the grave isn't even that hard a sell with those Australians who deny or disbelieve the existence of God. Twenty five percent of atheists and agnostics believe in miracles.
Australia's current enthusiasm stands in contrast to the ISSP finding in the late 1990s: that only 36 per cent of Australians and 59 per cent of Americans believed in miracles. Both figures have shot through the roof.
Unfortunately, the poll didn't reveal how many of those 5.6 million or so Australians only believe in miracles when it comes to their favourite cricket and/or rugby league teams.
Back in July, prime minister Kevin Rudd met with Pope Benedict in Vatican City, and pushed the case for MacKillop sainthood. Rudd also found time to hear Pope Benedict's pitch for some ethical backboning of the apparently now gestating 'world government' :
At a meeting in the pontiff's private library, the two men discussed the Pope's recently released encyclical which calls for a new world structure based on equity and fairness, rather than self-interest and greed.Greed. It's so 20th century.
