Sydney, Australia, Oct 23, 2019 / 17:00 pm
On Wednesday, Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP of Sydney announced the opening of the cause of canonization for Eileen O'Connor, a young Australian woman who founded the order Our Lady's Nurses of the Poor, also known as Brown Nurses.
As someone who cared for the poor and the sick, and who suffered greatly because of her own physical ailments, "Eileen becomes for us a symbol of hope in our time when so many issues where the life and dignity of the human person are under question," Bishop Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay told the Catholic Weekly.
Randazzo said he became familiar with the work of the Brown Nurses, so called because of their brown habits, while he was a priest in Brisbane in the 1990s.
"I have seen the way they have quietly worked amongst the poor and the dying and the spirit – the gentle but consistent spirit of Eileen O'Connor- was very obvious," he told the Catholic Weekly.