We tend to think of Mary MacKillop as being Australia’s first “Saint” already.

But she will not be a Saint, officially, until she has been “canonised” by the pope – and that cannot happen until a second miracle resulting from prayers to her is approved by the Church.

That approval is tipped by some to happen on the hundredth anniversary of Blessed Mary’s death on 8 August 2009.

If so, she may be declared a Saint some time in 2010.

Her first approved miracle was the 1961 cure of a woman suffering from leukaemia, which led to Mary MacKillop being declared “Blessed” by Pope John Paul II (pictured) in 1995.

 The second miracle put forward is the cure of a woman suffering from inoperable lung cancer in 1995.

Approval of this miracle took a step forward the other day when a Vatican medical board concluded that there was “no scientific explanation” for that cure.

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 Many people are, of course, sceptical about the whole idea of miracles.

The Church itself is cautious, to say the least, and for a miracle to be accepted it has to be examined by multiple teams of experts.

But the Catholic Faith is inseparably tied up with miracles.

No miracles, no Christianity.

Back in the days of Saint Paul, there were sceptics about the fundamental miracle of the Resurrection of Christ.

But without a belief in that miracle – that historical event – Christianity falls apart.

The Bible records Saint Paul’s words, “If the dead do not rise again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”