About 1700 people attended a public mass in St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne on Saturday on the 100th anniversary of the death of Sister Mary MacKillop.
Commemorations are being held across Australia, including in the town of Penola in South Australia where Sister MacKillop set up her first school in a stable in 1866.
Church leaders said they did not expect the Pope to announce Sister MacKillop's canonisation this weekend.
The ABC reports the cause for the sainthood of the Catholic Sister is nearing completion in Rome, but the process is not yet complete.
The Vatican has already recognised her first miracle of healing an Australian woman of terminal leukaemia.
