The approved prayer for Caroline Chisholm’s intercession and her progress to sainthood is set out below. Copies of the printed prayer card can be obtained in two ways.

Individuals may obtain five prayer cards by writing to “Prayer Cards, GPO Box 2171, Sydney. NSW. 2001” and enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

As the Saint-making page explains, the Catholic Church has a well-defined approach to discernment and assessment of claims made in relation to martyrdom for the faith, heroic virtue and other desirable qualities shown by individual Catholics during their lifetime. Reliance on the guidance of the Holy Spirit is paramount in the lead-up to the commencement of a Cause and throughout the official processes.

Formal and informal prayer is the royal road by which believers seek the Lord’s guidance and needful help of whatever kind. It is through the Holy Spirit that these are given, and the well-disposed, receptive believer is as open to hearing the Lord’s voice, recognizing the Lord’s actions and doing the Lord’s will as green leaves are ready to turn towards the sun for its life-giving light. So it is with the formal prayer now being distributed by those who are personally convinced of Caroline Chisholm’s saintly qualities. [Note: the / marks a suggested pause when the prayer is said aloud.]

We thank you, most loving and merciful God, / for the admirable life of Caroline Chisholm, / who heard your call in youth and responded as a woman of patient, energetic faith. / With the support of her husband Archibald and her children, / she assisted people in need, irrespective of their country or creed, by social reforms and charitable work, / especially re-uniting families, protecting vulnerable girls, placing the unemployed in gainful work / and achieving improvements for poor emigrants.

According to your providential will, may we receive the favors we ask through her intercession, / and may her heroic virtue be recognized and her example followed throughout the world, / leading the Church to number her among your saints.
Amen.

This is the prayer given an Imprimatur [Latin for “let it be printed”] by Archbishop Mark Coleridge, whose archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn takes in townships and countryside well populated with descendants of the original bush parties taken by Caroline Chisholm to the interior of New South Wales in the 1840s. Most fortuitously, the prayer card is dated on the feast-day of Saint James the Apostle – that is 25 July, 2007 – as Canon Allwood of the Anglican Church of Saint James in King Street, Sydney co-operated with Mrs Chisholm in her public charitable work from its outset and, in particular, contributed time and money to the Female Immigrants’ Home.

The prayer addresses and thanks our Creator for Caroline Chisholm’s admirable life and then restates some of the good woman’s Christian achievements. It concludes with two requests: if it is the divine will, that we may receive “the favors we ask through her intercession” and that her heroic virtue be recognized and her example followed . . . that the Church, exercising the authority given it by Christ, formally declare her to be a saint. Catholics believe in the intercession of the saints. At the core of that belief must be an understanding that favors received through the saints interceding with God on our behalf and at our request are due solely and entirely to God’s saving actions, not to any independent power of the sanctified.

The Saint making page refers to the necessity for favors to be obtained which satisfy the Church’s criteria for a miracle. Although “a marvel in our eyes”, a great many favors granted through intercessory prayer do not satisfy those criteria, which deal with what might be termed scientifically verifiable and miraculous change/s. The criteria correctly imposed will help to silence the skeptics and be a brake to the credulous.



There are art-print postcards and portraits showing this website’s main image. A framed postcard is pictured here. To enquire about obtaining framed or unframed postcards and portraits, please email webmaster@mrschisholm.com