Hopes are high for the canonisation of Blessed Mary MacKillop following the attention paid to the Australian nun by Pope Benedict XVI during a recent trip to Sydney.
The Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson and Auxiliary Bishop of Adelaide Greg O'Kelly will celebrate mass in Adelaide tonight to mark the feast day of the Blessed Mary MacKillop, on the 99th anniversary of her death.
The founder of the Sisters of St Joseph in South Australia was born in Melbourne in 1842 and died in Sydney on August 8 in 1909.
Church officials said Mary MacKillop and her fellow Josephites shared the lives of the poor and the itinerant.
"Mary is remembered for her eagerness to discover God's will in all things, for her charity and her abiding trust in God's providence," they said in a statement.
"Hopes are high for the canonisation of Blessed Mary."
The celebrations of Mother Mary's life started today with a morning mass at Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel in North Sydney.
Mother Mary was beatified by Pope John Paul II in January 1995, but she remains one documented miracle away from becoming Australia's first saint.
The Vatican has accepted the first miracle that Mother Mary cured a woman of leukaemia.
The second miracle, in which a woman was cured of terminal cancer after praying through Mary MacKillop for healing, is still being investigated.
Pope Benedict, who visited the Mary MacKillop shrine during his World Youth Day trip to Sydney last month, indicated Mother Mary would be canonised once that miracle is documented.
The Pope prayed at the shrine to Blessed Mary in Sydney during World Youth Day celebrations recently.
The pontiff also acknowledged her as one of the most outstanding figures in Australia's history.
