Mary MacKillop Website Big Hit For Social Enterprise

The developers of a website dedicated to Australia's first saint, Sr Mary MacKillop say the site has been so popular that it crashed after an unexpected influx of people tried to access it just days before her canonisation ceremony in Rome this weekend.

According to Anne Walsh, the deputy director of Fraynework Multimedia, the site, www.marymackillop.org.au which it designed and hosts for the Sisters of St Joseph was down for a short while on Thursday due to the unprecedented web traffic.

Anne Walsh says the response to the site has been amazing and anyone who hasn't gone to Rome has jumped on to the site resulting in them having to upgrade the server.

The stand-alone site was developed by Fraynework, a social enterprise aimed specifically at Not for Profits focused on education and Catholic organisations.

The website provides information about the woman who will be recognised as Australia's first saint at a ceremony conducted by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on Sunday.

Walsh says the site has been receiving 8000 to 10,000 visitors a day, mostly from Australia with almost 50,000 unique visitors so far in October.

Walsh says the Sisters of Saint Joseph have understood the value of new technology and wanted to make Mary MacKillop accessible to everyone in the lead-up to her canonisation, insisting early on, that the developers make a separate website for the soon-to-be saint.

Frayne Work has been operating as a Not for Profit social enterprise for 15 years, designing and hosting some 250 community websites. It was established by the Sisters of Mercy.

Walshe says the Sisters of St Joseph and Sisters of Mercy have a long association, not only in Australia, but in Ireland and England and even back to Mary MacKillop.

She says Paul Gardiner SJ who worked on the Cause of Mary MacKillop for 25 years, in the authorised biography of Mary MacKillop (1994) wrote that: On August 11, 1874 during Mary's second visit to Ireland she set out for the south for Waterford and then to Dungarvan and Cappoquinn where she stayed with the Sisters of Mercy. The only letter still in our possession of her experience in Ireland is written from the Convent of Mercy, Cappoquinn, August 30, 1874.

To follow the canonisation of Mary MacKillop go to: www.marymackillop.org.au.