As a young girl growing up in Bondi just after the Second World War, there were two things that loomed large in Sr Ailsa Mackinnon’s life – her tight-knit Catholic family and the beach, reports Catholic Outlook.
The family lived about 500 metres from the famous white sand, and more often than not on summer weekends, the young Sr Ailsa would be down there taking part in swimming races at the Bondi Ladies Swimming Club – located where the Icebergs club is now – or out in the waves bodysurfing.
Sr Ailsa Mackinnon RSM during a Diocesan gathering for those in consecrated life. PHOTO: Alphonsus Fok/Diocese of Parramatta via Catholic Outlook.
“We had a very outdoors lifestyle,” she says, which included regular tennis matches in the backyard and netball at school.
Even after she moved away from Bondi to join the Sisters of Mercy after school, and then in the years afterwards serving her Mercy community and the Church in Western Sydney and the Diocese of Parramatta, she never lost touch with the beach. It is a place to which she often returns, for solace and a swim.
‘Faith in God brings hope’
In the decades that she’s been in Western Sydney, Sr Ailsa has held a variety of roles in her Mercy community and the Diocese of Parramatta, many of them senior ones: as a teacher; long-serving principal of Our Lady of Mercy College in Parramatta; congregation leader of the then-100-strong Mercy community; head of the Mercy development arm, Mercy Works; and member of the Diocesan Curia, the body that assists the Bishop in running the Diocese, and on which she continues to serve.
And recently, she stepped down as Chancellor of Ministries for the Diocese, where she oversaw the creation of the Mission Enhancement Team.
Others might call these “achievements”, but Sr Ailsa sees everything that she has done in her life as a means of “helping influence people for good” so that their lives can be better.
This view of the world stems from her Mercy charism, which is devoted to promoting compassion, kindness and love.
“I think that sense of being with people in their struggles and in their endeavours to better their own lives brings hope,” she says.
“Hope has always been part of my aspiration; your faith in God brings hope and allows you to live with hope.”
Sr Alisa (centre left) with past and current members of the Mission Enhancement Team. PHOTO: Diocese of Parramatta/Catholic Outlook.
Sr Ailsa says perhaps the clearest expression of this charism in action was during her time at Mercy Works where she was involved with helping some of the poorest and most underprivileged people in the Asia-Pacific region. It was “this sense of hope that they had and that they imparted to you, just by the way that they lived their lives”, she says.
One example of this was in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, where Mercy Works was building a boarding school for girls. One day, while Sr Ailsa was there on a visit to the building site with another sister, a worker from the site suddenly ran up to them and threw his arms around her fellow sister. He told her that if it hadn’t been for the Mercy Sisters, and their work in the local prison teaching inmates new skills, he wouldn’t have this job.
“He was saying to her, ‘because of you my life has changed and turned around’, and that had such an impact on me,” she says.
For her, another great source of hope is young people. This is because, despite all that modern life has thrown at them, they remain “as aspirational as they’ve ever been”.
“People complain about how terrible teenagers are…well, they’re not, they’re not like that at all,” she says.
“They’re so idealistic and have such energy and aspiration for their futures, and that gives me energy…they just need people who will mentor them and encourage them to keep giving a sense of hope to the world.”
This mentoring role largely falls on teachers and this is why it’s such an important job, she says.
Sr Ailsa Mackinnon, Chancellor (Ministries), speaks to students at the LIFTED Breakfast with the Bishop at Bankwest Stadium. Image: Diocese of Parramatta/Catholic Outlook
“An older Mercy Sister once said to me, ‘when you start teaching, you think you’re teaching subjects, but after a while, you realise you’re teaching people’.
“That made a big difference in my life, to think that there is a person in front of me and that’s who I am working with…the end point is that you have an influence on their lives.”
Young people have continued to inspire her throughout her life, especially those in the Chancery and in particular the Mission Enhancement Team who “are products of a sound formation process they received while at school”.
The seeds of hope
But this power of good teaching, and of hope, was present in her own life, too.
She remembers being taught by Mercy Sisters at Holy Cross College in Woollahra, and before that at St Anne’s at Bondi Beach, and what a big influence they were on her decision to follow in their footsteps.
“[The Mercy Sisters] were young and vibrant, and they were good teachers and were friendly. So they became role models for me,” she says.
The seeds of wanting to join a religious community might have germinated at school, but they were planted at home.
Family life was happy and stable and was where Sr Ailsa first learned about hope. Her parents were “hopeful people”, she says, who were very involved in their local church in Bondi. Sr Ailsa and her older brother and sister grew up going to Mass every Sunday and immersed in the life of the parish.
That “Catholic atmosphere” influenced her brother, who joined the priesthood while Sr Ailsa was still at school. She remembers her own desire to join a religious community as a “gradual thing”, but it’s been one that propelled her along a path of great service.
Even now, after stepping back from full-time service, she has taken on a pastoral care role within her Mercy community. She is a true servant of hope, and as with all great servants she continues to say ‘yes’.
This article by Antony Lawes was originally published in the 2025 Ordinary Time | Winter edition of the Catholic Outlook Magazine, the publication of the Diocese of Parramatta, and later on the Catholic Outlook website.