Australian physician-turned-nun Mary Glowrey (1887-1957), who pioneered Catholic medical care for India’s poor, declared Venerable by Pope Leo XIV.
Newsroom (21/11/2025 Gaudium Press )In a significant moment for both the Australian and Indian Catholic Churches, Pope Leo XIV on Thursday authorised the promulgation of a decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Sister Mary Glowrey (1887-1957), an Australian medical doctor who became the first religious sister in Church history permitted to practice medicine.
The decree, approved during an audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, elevates Dr Glowrey to the title “Venerable,” the first formal stage on the path to possible beatification and canonisation.
Born in Birregurra, Victoria, to Irish-immigrant parents, Mary Glowrey excelled academically in an era when higher education for women remained rare. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with a medical degree in 1910, later specialising in ophthalmology and building a successful practice in Melbourne. In 1916 she served as the inaugural president of the Catholic Women’s Social Guild (predecessor of today’s Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga).
Her life changed dramatically after reading the biography of Scottish convert and medical missionary Dr Agnes McLaren, who had highlighted the acute need for female doctors in British India, where cultural norms often prevented women from being examined by male physicians. Confronted with a canon-law prohibition that forbade nuns from practising medicine, Dr Glowrey sought and obtained a special papal dispensation from Pope Benedict XV in 1920 – the first such permission ever granted.
That same year she sailed for India, joining the Congregation of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Guntur (then Madras Presidency, now Andhra Pradesh) and taking the religious name Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart. For the next 37 years she combined consecrated life with intensive medical service among the poorest, especially women and children.
The modest dispensary where she began work evolved into St Joseph’s Hospital, Guntur. Over decades she personally treated hundreds of thousands of patients and trained scores of local women as nurses, midwives, and healthcare assistants.
In 1943 Sister Mary founded the Catholic Hospital Association of India (later renamed the Catholic Health Association of India – CHAI), which today operates 3,572 Catholic healthcare and social-service institutions and serves more than 21 million patients annually, irrespective of religion or caste.
She died of cancer in Bengaluru on 5 May 1957. Her vision of a Catholic medical college materialised posthumously with the 1963 opening of St John’s Medical College and Hospital in Bengaluru, now one of India’s premier teaching hospitals.
The recognition of her heroic virtues has been welcomed enthusiastically in both India and Australia. For Indian Catholics, Venerable Mary Glowrey embodies missionary service that transcends religious boundaries; for Australians, she is the second woman from the country – after St Mary MacKillop (canonised in 2010) – to advance toward the honours of the altar.
The cause now awaits Vatican approval of a miracle attributed to her intercession, which would open the way for beatification. Devotees report numerous graces received through her prayers, particularly from former patients and the healthcare workers she formed.
If eventually canonised, Venerable Mary Glowrey would become the first medical doctor who lived as a fully professed religious sister to be raised to the altars – a powerful affirmation of the compatibility of professional excellence, missionary zeal, and consecrated life.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Asianews.it
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