Pope to name first Native American saint

The tapestry of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first American Indian to achieve sainthood, hangs from the St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, Friday, Oct. 19, 2012. Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk Indian who spent most of her life in what is now upstate New York, will be declared a saint along with six others in a ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Sunday. AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

VATICAN CITY—Pope Benedict XVI names seven new saints on Sunday including the first Native American, marking the start of a “Year of Faith” aimed at countering the rising tide of secularism in the West.

Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) – informally known as “Lily of the Mohawks” – lived in an area that is now on the border between the United States and Canada and is worshipped by believers in native religions as well as Catholics.

She will be canonized in St. Peter’s Basilica at a lavish ceremony that follows her beatification in 1980 by the late pope John Paul II.

Under a bright autumn sun, thousands of people, including American Indians, gathered outside the Basilica, which was decked with portraits of those to be canonized at the ceremony.

The other new saints include a French missionary to Madagascar, a Philippine missionary martyred at the age of 17, a German migrant to the United States who took care of lepers and a Spanish nun who campaigned for women’s rights.

Vatican watchers said the choice of the saints now was linked to the Roman Catholic Church’s efforts to highlight the need for a “new evangelisation” as church pews empty in Europe and the United States.

The canonizations are being announced during a synod of 262 bishops from around the world.

Tekakwitha, who had an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father, was converted by Jesuit missionaries as a child. After surviving smallpox and being orphaned, she earned a following for her deep spiritualism before dying at just 24.

Another well-known figure from North America being canonized is German-born Franciscan nun Maria Anna Cope (1838-1918).

She is known as “Mother Marianne of Molokai” because she looked after lepers on the island of Molokai in the Hawaii archipelago.

Another “martyr” who will be canonized on Sunday is the Philippines’ Pedro Calungsod, a young missionary who was hacked to death by hostile tribesmen along with a Jesuit priest on the island of Guam in 1672 while they were trying to convert locals to the Catholic faith.

“We are proud to be Filipinos,” said one of about 5,000 Filipino pilgrims who were expected to accompany Philippines’ Roman Catholic Church leaders to the ceremony, where Calungsod will be made a patron saint for young people.

‘He touches the heart of Filipino Catholics’

At home devotees have begun flocking to a small farming town that claims Calungsod as its own, while saint souvenirs have become popular items across the nation of nearly 100 million people.

“There is something about him that touches the heart of the Filipino Catholics,” Father Francis Lucas, a media officer with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, told AFP.

A French Jesuit, Jacques Berthieu, who was executed in 1896 in Madagascar by rebels from the Menalamba movement, is also on the list.

The missionary had refused to renounce his faith and is being considered the first saint of Madagascar, where he lived for 21 years.

France’s Socialist government, which has tense ties with the Church, will be sending Interior Minister Manuel Valls to the ceremony.

A German lay woman, Maria Schaeffer, who was from the pope’s German home state of Bavaria, is also being rewarded.

Schaeffer, who died in 1925, was badly burnt after falling into boiling water and spent the rest of her life bedridden.

She is credited with spreading the word of God in local villages.

An Italian priest, Giovanni Battista Piamarta, who in the late 19th century devoted his life to helping young people during the industrial revolution and founded a religious congregation, is also being canonized.

The seventh new saint, Spanish nun Maria del Carmen, also founded a congregation and worked to better the lot of poor women in the 19th century, defending their social rights and helping their children’s education.

The new canonisations will bring to 44 the number of saints named by the pope since the start of his pontificate in 2005.

Catholic saints have to have two miracles to their names, which have to be certified by the Vatican in a years-long procedure.

Originally posted at 01:58 pm | Sunday, October 21, 2012