Eileen O’Connor, woman who helped poor, worthy sainthood candidate
A DISABLED woman who helped the poor despite spending much of her life bedridden in pain is on the way to becoming Australia’s second saint.
NSW
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AUSTRALIA is officially on the way to getting its second Catholic saint — a 115cm tall disabled woman from Coogee who founded an order to nurse the poor despite spending much of her life bedridden in pain.
Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher has appointed a postulator in Rome to make the case for Eileen O’Connor to follow in the footsteps of Mary MacKillop, who was beatified in 1995 and canonised in 2010.
Auxiliary bishop Anthony Randazzo has been collating preliminary evidence for the past 18 months.
A formal investigation into O’Connor’s “heroic virtues” will now start, along with a search for evidence of associated “miracles” required for sainthood.
O’Connor, who has a school for disabled children named after her in Lewisham, has been described as both mysterious and miraculous in life and death.
Born in Melbourne, she fell out of a pram at age three and broke her spine, leaving her largely crippled, had limited use of one hand, suffered tuberculosis and lived in constant pain which sometimes rendered her unconscious.
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After moving to Coogee at age 10, and despite her disabilities, she founded Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor to care for the city’s needy after claiming to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Surviving members of the order yesterday welcomed official recognition of her courage and holiness.
Sister Margaret Mary Birgan said O’Connor’s back was covered in scars from surgeons who operated on her trying to fix her broken spine.
“Her whole life was one of pain and suffering and yet this poor young woman who endured so much was the life of the family.”
Like Mary MacKillop, O’Connor had to fight battles with church officialdom. One day in her early 20s she jumped out of bed and dressed before making a cup of tea, to the nuns’ astonishment.
After that she travelled to meet the Pope in Rome to argue successfully for the reinstatement of a priest with whom she had founded the order. He had been suspended because of rumours about their relationship spread by a rival order.
Even in death mystery surrounded the woman known as Little Mother by her community — when her body was exhumed from Randwick cemetery 15 years after her death in 1921 her body was found to be intact, according to some observers.