VATICAN CITY - She was
known as Lily of the Mohawks, or the Pocahontas of the Catholic Church. But
on Sunday, Kateri Tekakwitha went down
in history as the first Native American saint.
Born more than 300 years
ago in the Mohawks village of Ossernion - today Ausierville, forty miles from
Albany NY - she was one of seven people canonized by Pope Benedict XVI Sunday
in an open-air ceremony held in Saint Peter’s Square.
One of the remaining six
was also American: Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun who
cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii.
Kateri had a short life –
she died at 24 – and yet, as for most saints, her devotion to Christianity,
sacrifices and “heroic virtue” were so inspirational that her legacy survived
for generations.
Her mother was a Christian
Algonquin woman who was captured during a raid and given as wife to a Mohawks
tribal member. She was born in the middle of the 17th century, a time of
infighting between rival American tribes, deadly diseases and colonization. And
a time when French Jesuit priests preached in the area, trying to convert locals
to Christianity.
Kateri was only four years
old when a smallpox epidemic spread among the Mohawks tribe. Her parents and
younger brother were killed and although she survived she was left with
permanent scars on her face and an impaired vision. The Jesuit priests were
held accountable for having brought the disease, and three of them were
slaughtered.
And yet, at the age of 20, Kateri swapped the
Totem for the Crucifix.
She converted to Catholicism after living close
to French Jesuit priests, something her family and village saw as a betrayal
for siding up with colonizers. She soon became a pariah in her own tribe after
refusing to marry a Mohawk man, and was forced to leave the village to practice
freely her new faith. She walked hundreds of miles to Quebec, Canada, to join a
community of Christian women, and took a vow of lifetime chastity.
Soon her devotion led to self-inflicted painful
penances. She is believed to have walked barefoot in show, for whipping herself
bloody with reeds, praying hours in an unheated chapel on her bare knees on a
cold stone floor or for sleeping on a bed of thorns.
In the end, the punishing penances are believed
to have contributed to the weakening of her health, until her premature death
at 24 years old. And it was immediately after her death, the legend goes, that
it became clear she would be on her way to sainthood. Her smallpox scars,
witnesses claimed, miraculously disappeared minutes after her death.
Although the petition for her canonization was
filed in 1884, she was only blessed – the first step to become a saint – by
Pope John Paul II in 1980.
The miracle that sealed her sainthood came in
2006, when Jake Finkbonner, then a 5-year old boy from Ferndale, WA,
miraculously recovered from a flash-eating bacteria, allegedly through Kateri’s
intercession. Jake contracted Necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially deadly
infection, after cutting his lip on a baseball field. In a matter of days, his
condition became so critical his parents gave him his last rites and discussed
donating his organs.
When medical help seemed hopeless, his father
Donny, a Catholic member of the native American Lummi tribe, turned to Kateri,
already an icon in the local catholic community and the subject of many stories
he heard as a child. His congregation prayed Kateri and his mother even placed
a small relic, a small piece of Tekakwitha’s wrist bone, on his body. Soon after, Jake recovered.
On his website, Jake also remembers the role
played by doctors: “Please don't confuse the issue which
is that my survival is a miracle”, he writes.
“We thank the doctors at Children's Hospital for all that they did to
save my life. I wouldn't be here without
them”.
The canonization of Kateri has been welcomed
with mixed feelings in the 2.5 million-strong Native American community. While
most of the 680,000 catholic Native Americans are thrilled to finally have
their own saint and icon, others still resent the role of Catholicism during
the colonial era and the way it affected the indigenous traditions, culture and
customs.
Some traveled to Rome to see the ceremony.
Dressed in a traditional Indian Squaw brown dress and braided hair, Valery
Moran had come from Saskatchewan, Canada, to support her hero. “I am honored to
witness the canonization of our first aboriginal saint”, she told NBC News.
"She is my role model, I named my baby
after her. My baby is called Kateri."
Bill Volker, a falconer and sole representative
of the Comanche Nation, had mixed feelings about the canonization. "It’s
bittersweet, but I am delighted. It’s the right direction after all these
years,” he told NBC News in St. Peter’s Square. “Our relationship with the all
churches have not always been the best in the Americas, but I think this
heralds a new day for us”.
The Vatican's complicated saint-making
procedure requires that the Vatican certify a "miracle" was performed
through the intercession of the candidate — a medically inexplicable cure that
can be directly linked to the prayers offered by the faithful. One miracle is
needed for beatification, a second for canonization.
The five other new saints are: Jacques
Berthieu, a 19th century French Jesuit who was killed by rebels in Madagascar,
where he had worked as a missionary; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian who
founded a religious order in 1900 and established a Catholic printing and
publishing house in his native Brescia; Carmen Salles Y Barangueras, a Spanish
nun who founded a religious order to educate children in 1892; and Anna
Schaeffer, a 19th century German lay woman who became a model for the sick and
suffering after she fell into a boiler and badly burned her legs. The wounds
never healed, causing her constant pain.
Gen 49:19- Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the
last.
Gen 33:20-
And of Gad he said, Blessed [be] he that enlargeth Gad: he dwelleth as a lion,
and teareth the arm with the crown of the head.
Gen 33:21-
And he provided the first part for himself, because there, [in] a portion of
the lawgiver, [was he] seated; and he came with the heads of the people, he
executed the justice of the LORD, and his judgments with Israel.
Job 9:24- The
earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges
thereof; if not, where, [and] who [is] he?
2 Thes 2:3-
Let no man deceive you by any means: for [that day shall not come], except
there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of
perdition;
2 Thes 2:4-
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is
worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself
that he is God.
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