Today is the Memorial of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native
American to be on the road to canonization, a process that was given
formal recognition on December 19, 2011, when the Holy See announced
that Pope Benedict XVI had approved the Congregation for the Causes of
Saints’ findings that miracles attributed to Tekakwitha and six others
blesseds were authentic. Here is a bit about her life, from this February 2012 Catholic World Report article by Brian O'Neel:
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
Born in 1656, near Auriesville, NY, and nicknamed the “Lily of the
Mohawks,” Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha was the daughter of a Mohawk chief and
an Algonquin mother who was Catholic. After her parents and brother died
of smallpox, she became a ward of her uncle at age eight. As her mother
passed, she enjoined her daughter to always hold onto her holy
Christian faith and pressed her rosary into Kateri’s hands. The young
girl also had the disease but survived, although it left her with
cratered skin and very bad eyesight. In fact, Tekakwitha, which most
normally think of as her last name, is actually an Indian sobriquet
meaning, “She who bumps into things.”
Keeping her promise to
her mother was difficult as her uncle hated his late sister-in-law’s
faith. Like many Iroquois, he attributed the disease, death, and woe
that had done so much damage to his proud people on Christianity and the
missionaries who spread this strange religion.
By the time
she turned eighteen, remembering her mother’s Catholicism, she began
receiving catechesis. This coincided with her uncle betrothing her to a
local boy. Given his attitude toward Christianity, however, one can
imagine how well he received Kateri’s refusal to accept the match, as
well as her declaration that she belonged to God alone and would for the
rest of her life. Though upset, her uncle respected her wishes and even
reluctantly agreed to her receiving baptism. The condition: She must
stay with her people.
The problem was that her people thought
her the biggest fool and even something of a traitor for professing
Christ. She became the village pariah, and she received several death
threats. For two years she endured this abuse before finally fleeing to a
village of other Indian Catholics in neighboring Canada. It was there
that she received her First Communion on Christmas 1677. And there she
became a beloved member of the community and served her fellow Indians
as a consecrated virgin.
Within a short time, though, she
contracted a painful illness, and after years of suffering, she died on
April 17, 1680, uttering the words, “Jesus, Mary, I love you.” As she
expired, the severe small pox-induced scars that had marred her face
since childhood faded bit-by-bit as if they had been part of a mirage.
People were amazed at her radiant beauty, since they had only known her
as something of an ugly woman.
Believing they had a saint on
their hands, her former neighbors immediately began asking heaven for
her intercession, and the priest who had given her last rites claimed
many miracles were wrought by her prayers. Her cause for beatification
began in 1884 and concluded in 1980, when she became one of the first
people Bl. John Paul II beatified.
A hint of the pride many
Native Americans are taking in the canonization announcement are the
words of Anna Dyer, 84, a Mohawk living in New York, who said, “She was
always Indian. She never forgot.”
Still, not every Indian is
thrilled. Tom Porter is a Mohawk living near the Canadian-New York
border whose mission is to return his people to their ancient beliefs in
the moon, the sun, and thunder. He asserts, “She was used.”
“I don’t know if she really was a Christian or not,” he told Agence
France Presse. “They were in poverty at that time. The Europeans had
destroyed everything, people were destitute and starving, and if you
wanted to get help of any kind you had to be a Christian.”
Acknowledging that some of his Catholic relatives have a deep devotion to Bl. Kateri, he says, “It breaks my heart.”
Nonetheless, those Catholic Americans of all stripes—indigenous or
no—who know of Bl. Kateri are thrilled and proud such an outstanding
example of holiness has come from their shores.
Furthermore,
in more universal terms, both women are a good example of what the Pope
told a general audience in January 2010: “In every age the saints are
the true reformers of the Church’s life,” for as blogger Rocco Palma has
noted, both had the “ability to inspire and challenge others to embrace
a deepened fidelity to Christ and the Gospel, and [to imitate] the
integrity of their witness.”
Read the entire article.