Saint ‘She who bumps into things’
MOHAWK PILGRIMS will throng the Vatican this weekend to celebrate the canonisation of the first Native American saint.
‘‘Lily of the Mohawks’’ qualified for sainthood when the Catholic Church determined she had saved an American boy from a flesh-eating disease after he cut his lip in a basketball game.
Kateri Tekakwitha was to be declared St Kateri by Pope Benedict XVI today at a ceremony including a Mohawk sermon delivered by the church’s first Native American archbishop.
Kateri was born in 1656 along the Mohawk River in New York state. When she was 4, smallpox killed her parents and left her face scarred and her eyesight damaged. She was given the name Tekakwitha - ‘‘ She who bumps into things’’.
At age 20, she was converted to Catholicism by a Jesuit. When she died at age 24, the smallpox scars are said to have miraculously vanished from her face, earning her a reputation for being able to work miracles of healing. Kateri was declared venerable by Pope Pius XII in 1943, and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, becoming ‘‘Blessed’’.
More than 1000 pilgrims have travelled to Rome. They include the ‘‘miracle boy’’ – Jacob ‘‘Jake’’ Finkbonner, 12, from the Seattle area. Jake was 5 when he cut his lip in 2006. The wound became infected with necrotising fasciitis, and doctors warned his family that he would die.
Sister Kateri Mitchell, director of the Tekakwitha Conference in Montana, said his recovery was a miracle. ‘‘There was a request that I bring a first-class relic to his bedside to pray with him and his family, which I did. [It] was a piece of her wristbone blessed by Pope John Paul II.’’