St Mary MacKillop church: the Pilgrim Place built by the grace of the saints

Pilgrims to St Mary MacKillop are in for more than just an encounter with Australia’s first saint. The modern church in the outer western suburb of Keilor Downs has relics from half a dozen saints, not to mention ornaments and furnishings from around the world, and parish priest Msgr Charles Portelli has a story to tell about all of them.

There was the time relics of St Therese were touring the world. Her statue arrived in Melbourne earlier than expected, a day ahead of a reception for her at the New England Sisters of Malta nursing home next to the church.

So, says Msgr Charles, she spent the night in his garage.

’And since it was unlikely that anyone so famous would ever come to my garage again, I decided to sit out there for a while.

‘I said to her, “Now I have your complete attention, I’d like a new church. That would be very nice, if you wouldn’t mind.”‘

He says they dug all the foundations and prepared to build in 2003, but there was a delay in the official building permit being issued.

Msgr Charles was starting to worry it would never be granted and wondered how he would explain all the money already spent on construction that wouldn’t go ahead, when Ray, the maintenance man, rushed in waving a piece of paper.

The permit had arrived.

 ’It dawned on me what day it was. It was 30 September at 7pm. St Therese died on 30 September at 7pm in 1897.

‘Now, whether this is coincidence or whether it’s something more, I don’t know. I just find it fascinating that that’s what would happen on that exact date.’

This is the holy place of Mary.

So now a statue of St Therese sits in pride of place towards the front of the church alongside a relic of St Joseph—and there is a fascinating story to go with this relic too.

Msgr Charles recounts the legend of the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto in Italy, a house purported to have been Mary’s, carried by angels from Nazareth.

He says it was actually confirmed to have been brought there by the Angeli family in the 13th century, and there is a definitive link to the Holy Land—soil samples from around the house have been shown to be identical to the soil in Nazareth.

Msgr Charles says an excavation under the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, in a grotto that would have been used to house animals, unearthed graffiti carved into the walls that has been dated to around AD150.

‘And one of the graffiti said, “This is the holy place of Mary.” They identify locations often by graffiti, so it’s more than likely that the house of Loretto used to stand above the grotto in Nazareth.

‘It is possible that Joseph lived there, too, but we will never know.’

A piece of that grotto is the relic of St Joseph on display at St Mary MacKillop Church, sourced from a priest friend of Msgr Charles in Malta who has a large piece of it in his own church.

There are also relics of St Anthony of Padua, St John Paul II, Mary’s mother St Anne, St Paul and St Francis of Assisi.

And of course, there’s a relic of St Mary MacKillop herself, a piece of her coffin, kept beneath a statue of the saint with two children, symbolising those the co-founder of the Josephites was so passionate about educating.

We were turning all these kids away from school because we didn’t know where to put them ... I could hear her say, ‘Put them on the veranda, put them in the shed, put them anywhere, but don’t send them away.’

Msgr Charles credits St Mary McKillop with guiding him to build a larger church and school.

When he came to the parish in 2001, the primary school attached to the church was overflowing.

 ‘We were turning all these kids away from school because we didn’t know where to put them,’ he says.

‘I remember I went to Sydney to Mary McKillop’s tomb. I thought, “Well, you tell me what you want.”

‘And I could hear her say, “Put them on the veranda, put them in the shed, put them anywhere, but don’t send them away.”’

The simplest solution, Msgr Charles says, was to build a new church for the parish and give part of the old building to the school.

In the early 2000s, St Mary MacKIllop Church joined with neighbouring St Paul’s in Kealba to form a new parish, St Mary of the Assumption.

Those making the journey to this Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim Place will see captivating paintings of the four patron saints of Mary MacKillop—Jesus, John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary—that have come from Belarus.

Even the altar in the Adoration Chapel has a story. It belonged to Empress Eugenie, the wife of Emperor Napoleon III.

It made its way to Keilor Downs via the present-day St John of God Hospital in Bendigo and a church in Beechworth, where it had languished in a damp chapel for years until Msgr Charles found it and had it painstakingly restored.

Msgr Charles says St Mary MacKillop Church has been a busy Pilgrim Place already, with the Jubilee passports in great demand. He says people queue as he and Deacon Joshua McDermid stamp them after Mass.

Pilgrims are coming from all over the diocese, he says: whole families, individuals, members of religious congregations like the Missionaries of Charity Sisters in Fitzroy.

Many are incorporating a visit to more than one Pilgrim Place in their trip to St Mary MacKillop Church. Msgr Charles says many choose to also go to the Polish Marian Shrine, which is relatively close by in Aberfeldie.

‘One woman said to me she wants to go and see all these places that she’s never seen before,’ Msgr Charles says.

Unsurprisingly, given the church is named for her, Msgr Charles says the commemorative pilgrim cards of St Mary MacKillop are very popular.

Msgr Charles says that by the time Australia’s first saint arrived in Melbourne in the late 19th century, Mary MacKillop was already well known for her work in country New South Wales.

He says he is connected to her in a sense, through a parishioner in his own first parish, Melton, which is close to the site of one of the earliest Josephite communities in Victoria at Bacchus Marsh.

In 1986, a nonagenarian called Tom told Msgr Charles about meeting the Josephites’ co-founder when she came to open his school, St Bernard’s in Bacchus Marsh.

‘Tom told me, “I do remember she had a very kind face, and she had enormous pockets”, because every kid in the school was presented to Mary MacKillop—Mother Mary as she was known—and she gave each of them a lolly and a holding picture she kept in her pockets.’

It’s a small part in the big life of St Mary MacKillop—a life that pilgrims can remember and share in this Jubilee Year at St Mary MacKillop Church in Keilor Downs.