Kateri Tekawitha to Become a Saint

Sainthood nearer for Kateri Tekakwitha: Credited with miracle, Lily of the Mohawks to be canonized
[source: Montreal Gazette]

KAHNAWAKE - A Mohawk woman whose remains are entombed inside a Kahnawake church has moved one step closer to becoming a saint.

On Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI cleared the way for the canonization of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, known as Lily of the Mohawks, and six others.

Kateri died in 1680 at age 24.

“The bells have been ringing here all morning to let the village know,” said Rev. Ron Boyer, deacon at the St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake.

The decision was made on Tuesday after the pope signed a decree approving a miracle attributed to Kateri. She is credited with interceding to save Jake Finkbonner, a child in Washington State who developed necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating disease, after cutting his lip while playing basketball.

With Jake gravely ill in hospital, his parish priest asked his family and other church members to ask Kateri for intercession. Soon after, the bacteria stopped spreading and Jake recovered, his family says.

“It was a first-class miracle,” Boyer said on Tuesday.

Boyer said he will attend the canonization at the Vatican, probably next year.

In 1980, Kateri was beatified by Pope John Paul II, the final stage before sainthood. To be declared a saint, a miracle must be attributed to the candidate after he or she has been beatified.

The Vatican has been receiving requests to canonize Kateri for more than 100 years. The first recorded instance came in the 1880s, when Jesuit missionaries delivered a petition on behalf of Mohawks.

Kateri’s mother was an Algonquin married to a Mohawk chief, according to historian Darren Bonaparte, who recently published a book on Kateri’s life.

Her mother, father and younger brother died during the smallpox epidemic of 1661-62. She survived the disease, but it damaged her eyesight and left her face scarred.

She remained weak throughout her life, shunning sunlight, emerging only covered with a shawl or a blanket, said Bonaparte, a Mohawk who lives in Akwesasne.

She was baptized Catholic in 1676 and, after facing pressure from her uncle to give up Catholicism, was spirited away with the help of her brother-in-law and the Jesuits to the mission of St. François Xavier du Sault, in an area along the St. Lawrence River around what is now Kahnawake and Ste. Catherine.

When she died, it was reported that her scarred face became beautiful, and that priests and friends saw her in visions, while miracles were attributed to her intercession.