AT the funeral of Kathleen Evans on Wednesday I sat up the back, a suitable spot for a journalist raised as a Catholic but out of the church for decades.
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The funeral was in the Central Coast suburb of Kincumber which I know well. A few kilometres away on Brisbane Water was the former orphanage site established by nun Mary MacKillop in 1887, where Mrs Evans spent her final two years.
It is a beautiful spot. I remember the fetes held there each year to raise money for the orphanage, and being warned as a child not to go near the water.
Mrs Evans’ funeral reflected the unique place she holds in the Australian Catholic Church – the former Windale grandmother whose recovery from cancer in 1993 was deemed a miracle. It led to Mary MacKillop becoming Australia’s first saint.
We were told Cardinal George Pell sent his condolences, presumably from Rome where he sits in the pomp and pageantry reserved for the church’s blokes in frocks.
There were many nuns in the church, mainly Sisters of St Joseph, who taught me and many hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of children like me. They taught me to respect others, to have self-respect, to act justly and speak out for what is right. I thank them for that.
Priests who attended included former Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Michael Malone.
The pews were filled. On a hot day wide doors allowed a refreshing breeze through.
I was with other journalists in January, 2010 when Mrs Evans’ identity and role in the eventual canonisation of MacKillop was revealed. I had been writing about child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for nearly four years by then.
It was odd – but not the oddest thing I’ve experienced as a journalist, by any stretch – to be asking a woman about her “miracle” cure when I didn’t believe in miracles, didn’t believe in God, and knew that the ugliness within the church linked to child sexual abuse still had a long way to go before I could be finished with it.
But there we were – the jaded journalist and Kathleen Evans, a woman I instinctively liked and appreciated because she was down to earth, had a sense of humour, and radiated integrity. She had her faith but it wasn’t of the rusted-on kind. The road had been rocky.
A photo montage at the end of the funeral showed a woman beloved by her family. In shot after shot she was smiling, and with children. Her fifth great grandchild was born the day after she died.
On that day in 2010 I remember thinking that if a woman who was employed by Maitland-Newcastle diocese at the time, and who had been blind since birth, suddenly woke one morning and said she could see, I would regard that as pretty strong evidence of something miraculous.
Cancer recoveries, for me, aren’t in that league. And given the many people diagnosed with cancer each year, and the many prayers to saints for help, I can’t help thinking that a God who only doles out one “miracle” seems like a niggardly God.
But that’s not the message I want to leave when writing about Kathleen Evans. She died of cancer, which she beat before, but it’s how she lived that’s important here.
Christianity, in its many permutations, is about the teachings of Christ. She lived by those teachings – a life that was simple in worldly terms, but rich in compassion and love for others beyond family and friends.
A life worth emulating. A message worth remembering.
