THE halo effect from St Mary MacKillop’s recent canonisation has boosted enquiries at Australia’s Catholic Enquiry Centre by 63 per cent in the past year.
The Catholic Enquiry Centre (CEC), an agency of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, reported this increase over the past year has taken the number of enquiries for 2010 to 721.
CEC director Marita Winters said 27 per cent of all these enquiries came in October, the month of Mary MacKillop’s canonisation in Rome.
“Our advertising this year has proved to be very, very successful,” she said.
“Not only did we promote the Catholic message through Sunday papers but we also had a full-page advertisement in the Australian Women’s Weekly, one of Australia’s most popular magazines.
“Of course the positive publicity around the canonisation of Mary MacKillop has generated a lot of the increased interest.”
The Sisters of St Joseph, the order co-founded by St Mary, gave the CEC permission to use the image of Australia’s first saint in the advertising campaign.
“We are grateful to the Sisters of St Joseph for giving this permission,” Ms Winters said.
“We hope and pray that St Mary of the Cross will continue to call people to a life of faith in the Catholic tradition, and that the Catholic Enquiry Centre might respond to her command: ‘Never see a need without trying to remedy it’.”
The CEC offers free catechetical information to those who are not Catholic but are interested in finding out more about the Catholic faith.
For those who are ready to become Catholic, the centre is able to put enquirers in contact with their local parish.
For more information on the Catholic faith, or to make a donation to support enquirers, contact the Catholic Enquiry Centre on 1300 4 FAITH (1300 432 484).
