Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago I was visited by a constituent, Robyn Fahy, and a friend, Karin Clark, wife of Robert Clarke, member for Box Hill. They came to inform me of an exciting new development which has seen Dr Sister Mary Glowrey become only the second Australian to be on the official path to canonisation, after Saint Mary MacKillop. Dr Sister Glowrey was a remarkable women whose story needs to be told, as her selfless contribution to the betterment of humanity is an example to us all.

Born on 23 June 1887 in Birregurra, in the Western District of Victoria, Mary Glowrey was the third of nine children. Displaying immense academic talent early, Mary, on scholarship at South Melbourne College, matriculated at age 14 before graduating from the University of Melbourne in arts and medicine in 1910. After her first medical position at Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand, Mary moved to the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and St Vincent's Hospital, where she looked set for a distinguished local career in medicine. In 1916, she established the Catholic Women's Social Guild and became its first president; it was later to be known as the Catholic Women's League. In my electorate of Kooyong, she set up baby clinics in Camberwell with Dr Eileen Fitzgerald. As she was, for a time, based at the beautiful Carmelite Monastery around the corner in Kew—and with a younger brother at Xavier College in Kew—we formally claim her as one of our own in Kooyong.

But it was one event that changed her life forever. She read a pamphlet about the high infant mortality rate in India and the lack of medical missionaries. This was, for Mary, her calling. She made her trip to India, arriving in Madras in 1920. It was there that she established the Catholic Hospital Association of India, which now assists 21 million people every year. As the first nun to work as a doctor, her efforts were acknowledged both near and far, with Pope Pius XI bestowing a special blessing on her endeavours as a medical missionary and the Guntur nuns of her order saying she 'created the association out of nothing'.

It was therefore particularly pleasing that, just the other week, when Prime Minister Tony Abbott hosted a special dinner in Melbourne in honour of visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he acknowledged the work of Dr Sister Mary Glowrey and gave his support for her canonisation. Sister Glowrey was indeed someone special. I join with so many people across the Australian community, including Cardinal Pell, Archbishop Hart and Archbishop Fisher, in recognising her substantial contribution and her example of faith and love as one which we hope sees her canonised as Australia's second saint. Her efforts of yesterday provide a bridge between the Australian and Indian people of today.