Walking in the footsteps of Christ... The Record’s Anthony Barich joined pilgrims from St Mary MacKillop Parish in Ballajura to immerse themselves in Scripture on a trip to the Holy Land.
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Culture of life pioneer’s sanctity examined Meet the Australian nun who cared for India’s poor 30 years before Mother Teresa
Sr Dr Mary Glowrey treats the poor in a small rural village outside Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, India c 1924, working as a Sister of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The former ear, nose and throat specalist left her successful Melbourne clinic to join the Religious Order after having started the Catholic Women’s League. As a student, she also fought for the culture of life on a global level. PHOTO: FROM THE GLOWREY PAPERS WITH PERMISSION OF THE CATHOLIC WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF VICTORIA AND WAGGA WAGGA.
BY ANTHONY BARICH THE preliminary phase of the cause for canonisation of another Australian has been opened – that of Catholic Women’s League cofounder Mary Glowrey. Dr Glowrey organised her fellow medical students against practices she describes as “contrary to natural law”: such practices included sterilisation of the poor and the “benign neglect” of disabled babies. She also wrote a booklet for Archbishop Thomas Carr (Melbourne) against infanticide. Dr Anna Krohn, CWL Bioethics Convenor and Committee member for the Cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey, said in an exclusive column for The Record on Page 5 that Glowrey was also a “prophetic leader”. “She realised, decades before, what Pope John Paul II would write in his Letter to Women and
his Encyclical Evangelium Vitae: that it would be the ‘genius’ of women which would lead in the building up of a culture of life,” said Dr Krohn, who is also Academic Skills Advisor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family and a Tutor in Nursing Ethics and Spirituality at Australian Catholic University. Dr Glowrey left her thriving Ear, Nose and Throat specialist career in Melbourne to be a medical missionary for the poor in India. Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart announced on 2 December that the preliminary phase of her canonisation cause - a careful evaluation of her work and writings, together with her religious life - has started in Bangalore, India. Dr Glowrey left Melbourne in 1920 aged 33 to join the Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a Dutch Order of Religious Sisters, and
worked in India as a medical missionary until her death in 1957. The Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga, which holds more than 80 per cent of Mary Glowrey’s personal writings, has been working closely with the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in India for the past two years preparing for the commencement of her cause. The Archbishop of Bangalore, Dr Bernard Moras, appointed Fr Paul Puthanangady on 11 November to assist and guide the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the preparation of all documents and records needed in the preliminary phase of her cause. People are not canonised for their works, however, but for their holiness. Sr Glowrey was known never to attempt anything without praying to the Holy Spirit, knowing that with His help all things are possible. At her Requiem Mass,
the Bishop of Guntur described Sr Glowrey as a “special creation of God … a great soul who embraced the whole world.” For the last two years of her life, she shouldered the Cross of excruciating physical pain which she bore with extraordinary courage and patience. Her last words were: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” and “My Jesus, I love you”. Born the third of nine children in 1887 in Birregurra, 135km west of Melbourne, she studied medicine at Melbourne University. In the fourth year of her course she joined St Vincent’s Hospital and graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. She did her residency in New Zealand and returned to Melbourne in 1912 and held positions at the Eye and Ear Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital. By 1914 she had a successful practice at 82 Collins Street, where her religious vocation came in 1915
after attending Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral. During a chance reading of a pamphlet about the appalling death rate amongst babies in India and the need there for medical missionaries, she fell to her knees and knew that God, whose will she had constantly sought to do since an early age, was calling her to a life of medical mission work in India. She would wait until after the end of World War I before being able to travel to India. In 1916, she was elected the first General President of the newly formed Catholic Women’s Social Guild (now the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga.) Mary Glowrey also studied for a higher medical degree in obstetrics and gynaecology and was conferred as a Doctor of Medicine in December 1919. Continued on Pages 4-5 Anna Krohn on why we need Sr Glowrey’s spirit today, Pages 4-5