Mohawk woman to become first aboriginal saint
Posted Dec 20, 2011 02:47:29 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Mohawk woman buried in Quebec is poised to become the first aboriginal saint after hundreds of years of efforts to have her canonized.
The Vatican says Kateri Tekakwitha, who died in 1680, is among those who have passed the last test for sainthood.
No date has been announced for the canonization by Pope Benedict, but there are reports it could be as soon as February.
George Ryder, who volunteers at the St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, Quebec, where Tekakwitha is entombed in a marble shrine, says it’s about time.
Tekakwitha was born in New York in 1656 and her parents and brother died of smallpox when she was four and she was scarred by the disease.
Missionaries taught her Christianity and she embraced it with zeal after being baptized when she was 18.
Tekakwitha practised her faith despite some severe opposition and she finally fled to Kahnawake where her spirituality, virtue and charity impressed her own people, missionaries and the French.
It has been claimed her scars disappeared upon her death at age 24, revealing great beauty, and that many sick people who attended her funeral were healed.
It is also claimed Tekakwitha appeared to two people shortly after she died.
