First Native American Sainthood is One Week Away

TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE
By Blessed Kateri Parish, Submitted

NEW YORK---Perhaps, the Blessed Kateri Mission Church will soon be changing its name. The Catholics of Hoopa and surrounding communities are excited at the prospect of the canonization of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. On October 21st, Kateri Tekawitha will be made the first Native American Saint. Blessed Kateri Mission Church will celebrate a service in honor of Kateri’s canonization at the cross on Bald Hill, on October 21st, up Pine Creek Road at 2:30pm. [link]

Her story is simple and powerful:

• Kateri was born in what is now Auriesville, N.Y., on the southern bank of the Mohawk River, about 40 miles west of Albany. 
• At the age of 4, she was orphaned when a smallpox epidemic killed her Algonquin Christian mother and Mohawk-warrior father. 
• She also endured the disease and was badly scarred on her face. Her eyesight was also impaired, earning her the name Tekakwitha, which means, “she who bumps into things.” 
• She lived with her uncle, and even though a marriage was arranged; she took a vow of perpetual virginity, and ran away to a Catholic Indian Settlement. 
• After she died, the people of her community witnessed the miraculous clearing of her face leaving her skin smooth and scar-free. 
• Catholics began petitioning the Vatican to declare Kateri a saint in 1880. One hundred years later, the Vatican certified the first miracle attributed to her intercession. 
• Last year, the second required miracle was certified by the Vatican with the healing of a flesh-eating infection in an American Indian boy in Washington State. Stanley M. Perry, a Navajo, who is active in trying to save a sacred wetland in Kansas, said that having a Mohawk honored in the Catholic Church might also heal divisions.