Catholic Sainthood Expected For 2 Americans

FONDA, New York (AP) — Rural New York is looking forward to being the home of two of the Roman Catholic Church’s newest saints.

The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian, spent most of her life in the region during the 17th century. About 200 years later, the Blessed Mother Marianne Cope began a religious life that focused on providing medical care.

On Dec. 20, Pope Benedict XVI certified miracles attributed to the two women, the final step toward sainthood. Their canonization is expected this year.

They would be among just 12 of the Catholic Church’s thousands of saints who either were born in America or ministered in what is now the United States.

Elevation to sainthood for Blessed Kateri, a first for a Native American, is expected to boost visits to a pair of local shrines linked to her life. The National Shrine of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda and the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in nearby Auriesville are located amid the faded industrial towns along the Mohawk River Valley.

“We’ve been praying for this for a long time, years and years and years,” said Friar Mark Steed, the Kateri shrine’s director.

The property contains the archaeological site of the Mohawk village where Kateri spent her youth and where she was baptized by French Jesuit missionaries in 1676.

The sainthood could be a big step toward helping to heal centuries of conflict between whites and Native Americans, Steed said.

“That may be her spiritual gift to all of us,” he said.

Kateri was born in the Mohawk village that sat atop the hill where the Auriesville shrine was founded by the Jesuit order in the late 19th century. Her parents died of smallpox when she was 4, and the disease left Kateri badly scarred and nearly blind. Later, after enduring scorn from other Mohawks because of her Christian beliefs, she fled to a Jesuit mission near Montreal.

Known for tending to the sick and elderly, Kateri fell ill and died at 24. Her remains are entombed at St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, Quebec.

Mother Marianne Cope’s roots in the region began in 1840 after her family emigrated from Germany when she was a year old. A factory worker until she joined the Franciscan sisters in the early 1860s, the nun worked as a nurse and hospital administrator, helping to found two hospitals — St. Joseph’s in Syracuse and St. Elizabeth’s in Utica — that are still in operation. No one was denied medical care, according to Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the Syracuse-based Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities.

“Her policy is very much like the Patients’ Bill of Rights today,” Burkard said.

In the 1880s, Mother Marianne answered a plea from Hawaii for help providing care for leprosy patients. She died of natural causes and was buried there. In 2005, her remains were brought to the St. Anthony Convent in Syracuse.

In 2004, Pope John Paul II declared Mother Marianne “venerable,” the first step toward canonization after the Vatican recognized her intercession for the unexplained cure of a New York girl dying of multiple organ failure. The Vatican recommended her canonization in December after a second recovery was attributed to her intercession.

Kateri Tekakwitha was beatified in 1980 when John Paul II waived the first miracle typically required. Prayers to her are credited for the second Tekakwitha miracle: the recovery of a 6-year-old Washington state boy who had a flesh-eating disease.

“We’re considered quote, ‘a young country,’ compared to Italy, France and Germany,” Burkard said. “That we’re seeing more saints named from the United States really means that the faith in our country is maturing to the point that we have people who have lived among us who have given us many examples of a good life.”