Catholic higher education doesn’t start in a university lecture hall and doesn’t end with a black gown and a piece of paper under a new agreement St. Jerome’s University has signed with the Hamilton diocese and six Catholic school boards.

The agreement will allow the university, diocese and school boards to pool resources for adult education, volunteering, curriculum development and more.

“We look at it very positively as an excellent opportunity to support each other in the mission of Catholic education and to promote Catholic education as a life-long process,” Gus Hubbard, Hamilton Catholic District School Board superintendent of education, told The Catholic Register.

Hamilton, Brant-Haldimand Norfolk, Waterloo, Bruce-Grey, Halton and Wellington Catholic school boards are signatories to the agreement with St. Jerome’s.

Beginning with a casual conversation about Catholic education in Waterloo Region, the agreement was developed with Hamilton Bishop Doug Crosby’s encouragement over a year of meetings. The agreement was signed by all parties Sept. 20.

“It helps all partners to think about Catholic education as something that extends from a child’s early years through high school, post-secondary education and beyond,” said St. Jerome’s religious studies professor Cristina Vanin in an e-mail.

For Barbara Decker Pierce, seeing the joy in the faces of those taking part in King’s College University’s Liberal Arts 101 course is priceless.

The co-founder of the free course offered to London’s underprivileged at the Catholic college at London, Ont.’s Western University, Pierce says she loves “the enthusiasm with which the participants come to the program.”

She enjoys “the look on their faces when they connect with knowledge, when they are treated with respect, when they feel like they’re part of something that is helping them grow as individuals.”

Pierce is the director of King’s School of Social Work. Though the program is run by King’s, it’s a joint activity between Western’s Registrar’s Office, the Dean of Students and the School of Social Work.

King’s is wrapping up the fifth session of its increasingly popular Liberal Arts 101 course. Every fall semester since 2008, the Catholic college has offered free university-level classes to underprivileged members of the London community.

Fifteen participants are selected for each session, and every Tuesday night for the duration of the program, a different liberal arts topic is covered.

This past semester, lectures covered serious issues facing First Nations communities, what psychoactive drugs really do to the mind and body, the economic rise of China, the history of electricity in Canada, the Occupy movement and understanding the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis.

The cross-section of subjects covered is largely dependent on which faculty members volunteer and what they would like to teach. This semester, there are six faculty volunteers.

“The faculty love it,” said Pierce. They enjoy “the love of learning that they see on the faces of people in the program.”

Pierce describes the participants as attentive and always eager to jot down notes and ask questions.

Before the lecture, each class begins with a communal meal.

“The meal is important I think in terms of showing hospitality,” said Pierce. It brings together classmates, faculty, the co-ordinators and the six or seven student volunteers from the School of Social Work.

After the meal, the lecture lasts for about an hour, followed by discussion groups.

“We divide into small groups for some questions that the lecture has presented or provided, and those small groups are facilitated by our social work students,” said Pierce.

“This is a chance for them to work on some of their facilitation skills and also to connect them to the participants.”

The program also provides bus tickets and child care subsidies to participants in need “to remove any barriers people might have from participating,” Pierce said.

Some participants attend the program to test their readiness for post-secondary education. Participants have included those with physical or psychiatric challenges, single parents, immigrants and refugees.

King’s College was founded in 1954 and is sponsored by the diocese of London. Its mission is in part “to foster an environment based on open inquiry, Christian values and service to the larger community.”

The Liberal Arts 101 program is run out of the School of Social Work, said Pierce, as “It’s consistent with our mission to reach out to community, to be present in our community, and it’s also consistent with the values of the School of Social Work, which are clearly to support and assist people in making change.”

The seventh and last class of the program is a dinner and awards night where participants are acknowledged for completing this non-credit course and asked what could be improved upon.

TORONTO - It’s hard to believe, watching John Edwards cradle his giant lute-like theorbo, that the music he is playing could be considered anything but sacred.

As he moves his fingers over the instrument’s neck, the delicate strains of Monteverdi that blossom are both rapturous and heavenly.

However, as Edwards notes, these divine melodies were often the product of secular compositions that hoped to draw in churchgoers during the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation.

“While the Protestants are doing three-hour sermons, the mention of the Baroque is sort of for the Counter-Reformation to put ‘sparkly things’ to draw you in that way,” laughs Edwards, one part of The Musicians in Ordinary, who have been commissioned by the University of St. Michael’s College to conduct the Principal’s Music Series for the 2012-13 season. The series launched Oct. 23.

St. Michael’s is acting as a patron of the event, which will serve not only as a one-of-a-kind concert opportunity for students, but also function as an educational exploration of a remarkable period in musical history.

The Musicians in Ordinary are a two-person ensemble of John Edwards, on the towering, lute-like theorbo, and soprano Hallie Fishel. Joined by some of Toronto’s pre-eminent Baroque musicians, Edwards and Fishel will be presenting four concerts that explore the music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods that often times blurred the lines between sacred and secular.

As an example, Edwards displays an image of The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, a famous marble sculpture by Bernini, that is at once a display of reverence and sensuality. The idea, explains Edwards, was for the Church to capitalize on the popularity of the Baroque esthetic that would appeal to the general population as they attended church as well.

“That was what they were aiming for: to draw the people in. So, it seemed... that they were seeing it as giving the public at large an access to the arts, in a way,” said Edwards.

“I think that one of the things, with the Counter-Reformation, they try and use Mary as a ‘selling point’ to draw you in.”

Monteverdi, one of the most popular composers of the time, is featured in the series’ opening concert, along with works by Barbara Strozzi, a courtesan, and Isabella Leonardi, an Ursuline nun, among others. It seems a great study in contrast to hear the works of a courtesan, who writes in her “O Maria”: “She has conformed the hearts of all to her virtue, and she delights in the heritage of the Lord.”

“Luckily they’re inventing opera at the same time, and Monteverdi was an opera composer,” said Edwards. “So he’s using the same tricks as he would use to make you fall in love with Orfeo that he uses those to make you fall in love with the Virgin Mary.”

Monteverdi (who in addition to being a popular opera composer was also the maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s in Venice) was a composer whose work was a foremost example of the transition between the polyphony of the Renaissance to the sheer emotionalism and complexity of Baroque music. This fit perfectly into the Counter-Reformation’s integration of secular elements to reinforce the faith.

“In some ways it’s similar to today; there’s a lot of changes in society... all of a sudden they have access to information. There are all these changes in the music, so how do you integrate things like this? We have some of the same problems in church music today,” said Edwards.

Take Monteverdi’s “Nigra sum,” for example, with text like: “I am black but comely, daughters of Jerusalem. Therefore the king has delighted in me and brought me to his chamber and said to me, ‘Arise, my love, and come.’ ”

This particular piece is from his Mass for six voices to the Most Holy Virgin, which Monteverdi notes is “suitable for the chapels or chambers of princes.” It seems unlikely we would hear such textual interpretation today.

“I think the music in this concert is composed so successfully that I think it can show us something too,” said Edwards of its lasting effect.

Along with Fishel and Edwards, audiences of the series will be able to see performances by Tafelmusik’s Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahern (Baroque violin), and the noted organist Philip Fournier (organist and music director at St. Vincent de Paul Church). Additionally, several of the concerts in the series will feature pre-performance talks by some of the leading scholars in the field.

“That scholarship that we’ve been doing with these different people... it’s silly to do scholarship on the cultural context of performance, and then not do the music,” said Edwards.

“Luckily, with our residency at St. Mike’s, that’s given us a place to present some of this stuff to a real audience.”

For more see www.musiciansinordinary.ca or www.stmikes. utoronto.ca.

Felicity Sattan walked away from Brescia University’s Take the Lead contest a more confident young woman.

Sattan, now a third-year Nutrition and Family student at Canada’s only women’s university, was introduced to Brescia in 2010 when she competed in the London, Ont., school’s all-female public speaking contest. She was a finalist in that year’s contest.

“I always tell my profs and my classmates that Take the Lead was really instrumental in improving my public speaking skills and becoming more confident and just being an all round better presenter, which I think is an important skill in post-secondary,” Sattan said.

She uses those skills often and at least once a semester in each of her university classes.

Take the Lead has been held five times since 2008. It is a recruitment initiative Brescia usually holds once a year where the university invites Grade 11 and 12 female students to develop public speaking skills and compete for the top prize of a one-year academic scholarship to Brescia.

There are two contests this year, the first held last spring and the next on Nov. 10.

With four contest rooms simultaneously active, six or seven student speakers have five minutes each to give their all to their speeches on women who inspire leadership. Then the top six or seven participants make it to the final round. The judges in both rounds are always female. Second prize is $250 and third prize is $100.

“I want them to leave with pride in themselves, for just stepping up to that microphone. That podium is amazing,” said Sheila Blagrave, one of the organizers and director of Communications, Marketing and External Relations at Brescia.

Blagrave wants participants, whether they win or not, to leave with “a sense of community and a sense of belonging to a group of women who share in that.”

Brescia’s close-knit and family like community is what attracted Sattan, who is from Stoney Creek, Ont. But it was Brescia’s “focus on leadership (that) was the big turning point,” she said.

“We stand for cultivating leadership among women,” said Blagrave. “And we propose that women, by the time they leave, are quite bold and willing to take on leadership positions. This contest aligns itself really well with our mission and our strategic objective in post-secondary education.”

Brescia, a Catholic university, was founded 93 years ago by the Ursuline Sisters. It accepts women of all faiths. Affiliated with Western University, students have access to classes on Western’s main campus and its two smaller campuses.

Brescia was also to host the National Conference of the Canadian Catholic Students’ Association Oct. 26.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Proclaiming seven new saints -- including St. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Marianne Cope from North America -- Pope Benedict XVI said they are examples to the world of total dedication to Christ and tireless service to others.

In a revised canonization rite Oct. 21, the pope prayed for guidance that the church would not "err in a matter of such importance" as he used his authority to state that the seven are with God in heaven and can intercede for people on earth.

An estimated 80,000 pilgrims from the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Italy, Spain, Germany and Madagascar filled St. Peter's Square for the canonization of the holy women and men who ministered among their people.

The pilgrims applauded the proclamation of the new saints, who included: Kateri, an American Indian who was born in the United States and died in Canada in 1680; Mother Marianne, a Sister of St. Joseph who traveled from Syracuse, N.Y., to Hawaii to care for people with Hansen's disease and died in Molokai in 1918; and Pedro Calungsod, a teenaged Philippine catechist who was martyred in Guam in 1672.

The other new saints are: French Jesuit Father Jacques Berthieu, martyred in Madagascar in 1896; Italian Father Giovanni Battista Piamarta, founder of religious orders, who died in 1913; Sister Carmen Salles Barangueras, founder of a Spanish religious order, who died in 1911; and Anna Schaffer, a lay German woman, who died in 1925.

In his homily at Mass following the canonization, Pope Benedict prayed that the example of the new saints would "speak today to the whole church" and that their intercession would strengthen the church in its mission to proclaim the Gospel to the world.

The pope also spoke about each new saint individually, giving a short biographical outline and highlighting a special characteristic of each for Catholics today.

Pope Benedict called St. Kateri the "protectress of Canada and the first Native American saint," and he entrusted to her "the renewal of the faith in the First Nations and in all of North America."

The daughter of a Mohawk father and Algonquin Christian mother, St. Kateri was "faithful to the traditions of her people," but also faithful to the Christianity she embraced at age 20. "May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are," the pope said.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, who is of American Indian descent, told Catholic News Service, "I think many young people today are embarrassed about embracing the Catholic faith because they live in a secular culture that's hostile toward religious experience."

St. Kateri also "grew up in a place where there was great hostility toward Christianity," Archbishop Chaput said, but she resisted all efforts to turn her away from her faith, "so in some ways she would be a model of fidelity in the face of persecution on religious freedom grounds."

Archbishop Gerald Cyprien Lacroix of Quebec told CNS that the canonization of the first aboriginal of North America is "huge for us." St. Kateri, he said, is an excellent model for young people of "living a simple life, faithful to the Lord in the midst of hostility."

St. Kateri's life and canonization show that "saints don't have to do extraordinary things, they just have to love," Archbishop Lacroix said.

Francine Merasty, 32, a Cree who lives in Pelican Narrows, Sask., said, "Kateri inspires me because she's an aboriginal woman. According to sociologists, aboriginal women are at the lowest (social) strata, and for the church to raise up to the communion of saints an aboriginal woman is so awesome and wonderful."

Jake Finkbonner, the 12-year-old boy from Washington state whose healing was accepted as the miracle needed for St. Kateri's canonization, received Communion from the pope during the Mass. Jake's parents and two little sisters did as well.

Speaking about St. Marianne of Molokai in his homily, Pope Benedict said that a time when very little could be done to treat people with Hansen's disease, commonly called leprosy, "Marianne Cope showed the highest love, courage and enthusiasm."

"She is a shining example of the tradition of Catholic nursing sisters and of the spirit of her beloved St. Francis," the pope said.

Leading a group of Hawaiian pilgrims, including nine patient-residents from Kalaupapa, where St. Marianne ministered, Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva said St. Marianne is "an inspiration for those who care for those most in need, which is what all Christians are called to do. Now, with universal veneration, she can inspire people around the world."

With thousands of Philippine pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, Pope Benedict praised St. Pedro, a catechist who accompanied Jesuit priests to the Mariana Islands in 1668. Despite hostility from some of the natives, he "displayed deep faith and charity and continued to catechize his many converts, giving witness to Christ by a life of purity and dedication to the Gospel."

The pope prayed that "the example and courageous witness" of St. Pedro would "inspire the dear people of the Philippines to announce the kingdom bravely and to win souls for God."

Pope Benedict also cited St. Anna Schaffer as a model for a very modern concern.St. Anna was working as a maid to earn the money for the dowry needed to enter a convent when an accident occurred and she "received incurable burns" which kept her bedridden the rest of her life, the pope said. In time, she came to see her pain and suffering as a way to unite herself with Christ through prayer, he said.

"May her apostolate of prayer and suffering, of sacrifice and expiation, be a shining example for believers in her homeland, and may her intercession strengthen the Christian hospice movement in its beneficial activity," the pope said.
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Contributing to this story was Francis X. Rocca.

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You can enjoy the features below about St. Kateri Tekakwitha on CatholicRegister.org.

Students at an Ottawa elementary school will be getting a full-day pass from the regular classroom in order to go to school on sainthood when Kateri Tekakwitha is canonized. 

On Oct. 22, the day after Kateri is made a saint by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Elementary School students will put away their math books and readers to spend the whole day studying St. Kateri and the process of canonization. They’ll watch videos from the Oct. 21 ceremony in Rome, hear about the school’s connection to Kateri and learn about her extraordi­nary life and culture from former teacher Line Douglas. 

“She lived her faith and was devoted to others, caring for the elderly and the infirm while the others went about their business in the spirit of love and simplic­ity,” said Douglas, 70, explaining what she’ll tell the students. “She was so intense and so devoted. She was in love with the sublime, with God and did everything in such an admirable, straightforward, pure way.” 

The day of learning is part of a two-month school celebration that will culminate when the school is renamed Saint Kateri Tekak­witha in late November. Similar renaming ceremonies will also occur at Blessed Kateri Catholic Elementary School in Hamilton, Ont., Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic School in Toronto and Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Ele­mentary School in Markham, Ont. 

But the Ottawa school is taking things a step further. 

“We’ve got multiple events,” said principal Paul Gautreau. “We’re using it as an opportunity for our kids to learn about Kateri and learn about what is a saint.” 

The program started after the Thanksgiving long weekend when the student body, about 200 strong, were asked daily questions about Kateri, he said. 

“We really want students’ voices to come through. We aren’t neces­sarily looking for the right answer, we want to know what they know as a starting point.” 

Douglas, a descendent of the Mohawk nation, began teaching at Blessed Kateri in 1986 when the school opened. She retired in 1998. During her tenure at the school, Douglas worked hard to teach her students about Kateri’s devotion, dedication to faith despite social oppression and love of nature. 

“I hoped that she rubbed off on me,” said Douglas. “I just love Kateri. I have a devotion to her.” 

In the month leading up to the renaming of the school, a member of the Mohawk nation will frequent the Ottawa school to deepen the children’s knowledge of Kateri. They’ll study native culture and the challenges Kateri faced practising her faith in a 17th-century native culture.

They’ll also learn native drumming, which they will perform during the Nov. 29 renaming ceremony where tra­ditional aboriginal refreshments and snacks will be served. 

“Part of the reason for (the Nov. 29 date) is that many of people who we are going to ask to come here will actually be in Rome for the canonization,” said Gautreau. 

Those who will be in Rome include Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, a Mohawk leader and an Algonquin leader who once owned the land the school is located on. 

Gautreau said he hopes the lessons continue after the school is renamed because he feels there is a lot his students can learn about their faith from Kateri. 

“I hope that these celebra­tions will provide a little spark that will help things to just keep moving forward,” he said. “She was extremely faithful in chal­lenging circumstances in that she renewed her faith in those chal­lenging circumstances. That’s a message we can hopefully bring to the students.”

VATICAN CITY - Although separated from her by three centuries, an ocean and major cultural differences, Jesuit Father Paolo Molinari absolute­ly loves Kateri Tekakwitha, the Native American who becomes a saint Oct. 21. 

While the 88-year-old Italian Jesuit was forced to give his successor most of the sainthood causes he still was actively promoting when he turned 80, “thank God, they let me keep Kateri.” 

Molinari, one of the Church’s most prolific postulators — as the official promoters of causes are called — inherited Kateri’s cause from his Jesuit predecessor in 1957. He shepherded her cause to beatification in 1980. 

“I love her. She’s a lovely young lady indeed,” said the Jesuit, his eyes sparkling. 

Molinari said his admira­tion for Kateri, combined with the complex Vatican process for declaring saints and the fact that she died some 330 years ago, gave him 55 years to practice the virtue of patience. But unlike many of the so-called “ancient causes” that are surrounded by pious legends, but lacking hard evidence, Kateri’s cause was supported by plenty of eyewitness accounts of her life, faith, good works and death. 

The Jesuit missionaries who baptized her in 1676 and provided her with spiritual guidance until her death in 1680 at the age of 24 wrote formal annual reports about their missions to the Jesuit superior general. Kateri, known as the “Lily of the Mohawks,” is mentioned in many of the reports, which still exist in the Jesuit archives, he said. 

Molinari also had access to the Jesuits’ letters that spoke about Kateri in glowing terms and to biographies of Kateri written by two of the Jesuits who knew her at the Mission of St. Francis Xavier in what is now Kahnawake, Que. Frs. Pierre Cholenec, her spiritual director, and Claude Chauchet­iere, who also did an oil painting of Kateri shortly after her death. 

Kateri was born to a Catholic Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father in 1656 along the Hudson River in what is today upstate New York. 

After her baptism, Molinari said, “she kept living the life of a normal Indian. She continued to be an Indian young lady, and yet she did it with the spirit of the Gospel: showing goodness and tenderness to people who were in need.” 

She suffered from light sensi­tivity after contracting smallpox, so would spend much of her time inside. She prayed and made garments out of hides for those who were unable to make their own, he said. 

Molinari said that although the cause was challenging at times, he kept working for Kateri’s canon­ization because of her importance to the native peoples of North America. 

Kateri is a model who can “help those who are Christian live the Gospel in their own culture.” 

The Catholic Church, he said, “is the first organization that has acknowledged the richness of one of their own people. The U.S. and Canadian governments have never done anything like that.” 

Once Kateri was beatified, Mo­linari’s efforts turned to helping more people learn her story, en­couraging people to trust that she could intercede with God to help them and finding an extraordinary grace that could be recognized of­ficially as a miracle granted by God through her intercession. 

The Jesuit said that in the sainthood process, miracles are “the confirmation by God of a judgment made by human beings” that the candidate really is in heaven. 

In Kateri’s case, the recognized miracle was the healing of five-year-old Jake Finkbonner from a rare and potentially fatal disease, a flesh-eating bacteria called nec­rotizing fasciitis. The boy and his family are members of St. Joseph parish in Ferndale, Wash., in the Seattle archdiocese. 

“Kateri lived 300 years ago and yet she is widely remembered with love and admiration to the point that people believe she is certainly with God because of the way in which, as an Indian woman, she opened herself to the grace of God, became a Christian and lived as a Christian,” he said. 

People are convinced that God listens to her and that “she always listens to those in need, just as she did in life,” he said.

KAHNAWAKE, QUE. - The small Catholic community of St. Francis Xavier Church, with the St. Lawrence River and sprawling Montreal as its backdrop, has en­thusiastically prepared for the can­onization of Blessed Kateri Tekak­witha. 

Located in Mohawk territory in Kahnawake, the church enshrines the remains of Blessed Kateri, a native woman who found refuge and spiritual renewal in the region where she spent her final days as a Catholic. Her remains lay beneath a marble tomb in the church, entombed primarily to ensure their safety and respect, as someone had previously attempted to steal them many years ago. 

Pilgrims can kneel and pray or light a votive candle with Blessed Kateri’s likeness on it. The image is based on an oil-on-canvas painting, housed in a room beyond the gift shop, painted by Jesuit Father Claude Chauchetiere, the pastor of St. Francis Xavier Mission from 1677 to 1688, and a witness at Blessed Kateri’s death. 

In a gift shop adjacent to the church, Kahnawake native Ann-Marie Sky talks about the importance of Blessed Kateri’s example not only for herself, but for the survival of the parish. 

“For me, it’s her spirituality and her perseverance during the time and after she became Catholic. She was ostracized for that, so her faith really carried her through,” Sky said. Similarly, the parish has had to learn to persevere just to keep the church doors open. 

“The church almost had to close a year and a half ago due to finances,” Sky explained. “We were just working our way back up and we got the news that she will be canonized, so now we’re really trying to keep the church afloat.” 

For a parish that only sees about 60 regular Mass-goers on Sunday mornings, the annual $25,000 price tag for utilities to heat and use the church has been a challenge. But with great faith and ambitious fundraisers, it has managed to pay the bills. And since the announcement that Kateri would be canonized on Oct. 21, making her the first North American aboriginal saint, the parish has seen nearly three times the number of pilgrims it normally sees. The demand for Kateri merchandise has risen and Sky is trying to stock enough mer­chandise before Oct. 21, when the mission expects busloads of visitors to join parishioners for a re-broadcast of the canonization in Rome. 

The Pope’s Feb. 18 announce­ment of Kateri’s canonization came as a surprise. 

“I couldn’t believe it, because after Brother André was canonized, I didn’t think there would be anybody else from Quebec canonized for another 20 years,” Sky said. 

And not only in Quebec, but from the same area, she added. From the church in Kahnawake, the dome of St. Joseph’s Oratory on Mount Royal — the legacy of St. Brother André — is easy to spot across the river on a clear day. 

Like Sky, Kahnawake resident Beverly Delormier has been working diligently to prepare for the big day, although Delormier will be spending it in Rome. 

“I was there in 1980 with my daughters when she was beatified and never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would go there again for the canonization,” marvelled Delormier. “The day of the beatifi­cation everybody had their native dress on, so it was really something spectacular to see.” 

For Delormier, Blessed Kateri is an important intercessor. 

“It’s all little things, but I believe in the power of prayer.” 

Deacon Ron Boyer, Canadian vice-postulator for the canoniza­tion of Kateri, says her canoniza­tion is long overdue. But more im­portantly, the canonization brings to light God’s desire to reach the aboriginal people. 

“Her first miracle happened about 15 minutes after she died,” Boyer said, referring to the his­torical accounts of Kateri’s trans­formation. Kateri had contract­ed smallpox as a child and was left partially blind and covered with facial scars. Minutes after her death, any trace of her scars vanished and her appearance was described as beautiful. 

“Why would God glorify a dead body? Why? Nobody has been able to answer that for me, but I believe He did it to show us that there is a God,” Boyer concludes. 

Boyer adds Kateri is also signif­icant for her impact on Christians and non-Christians alike. 

“Many non-Catholic aboriginal people are going to Rome to pay homage to Kateri. She was special, a lady of many qualities,” Boyer said. “She is also the empress of ecology and a symbol for the youth.” 

As the diocese of Saint-Jean- Longueuil is not immune to the shortage of priests in Canada, St. Francis Xavier has a pastor, Fr. Raymond Esprit, who is present only three days per week. Boyer hopes the canonization and increased traffic might mean a permanent priest in the future. 

In the meantime, the canoniza­tion has already served to strength­en ties within the Kahnawake community. A committee from the parish has been working with the diocese to prepare for the big day, as well as a thanksgiving Mass to be held at St. Joseph’s Oratory on Nov. 4. 
Saint-Jean-Longueuil diocese is sending 200 pilgrims to Rome. 

“For the native communities and for the larger community in North America, the canonization is extremely important because of her status as the first native woman of our continent to be recognized as a saint,” said Auxiliary Bishop Louis Dicaire. “We have been surprised by the interest from the general population of our diocese, often among young people 25 to 30 years old. Kateri is providing a source of inspiration.” 

Although children do not receive formal Catholic education through the Quebec school system, volunteers at the Shrine say visits from area schools are on the rise and children learn about the woman whose name graces the local hospital, school and nearby island. 

(Girard is a freelance writer in Ottawa.)

When then five-year-old Jake Finkbonner showed up to play his last basketball game of the season in Ferndale, Wash., he had no idea it would change his life and lead to events that would culminate in the canonization of a saint. 

Twice a refugee. Twice an orphan. An outsider among her own people. Kateri Tekakwitha lived in a time of war, famine, disease and turmoil. She was baptized at 20 and dead at 24 but lived such an extraordinary life of faith, courage and hope that the Church has now invested its hope in her, declaring her the first North American aboriginal saint, patron of ecology and ecologists, of exiles and youth.

St. Peter’s Square will look very different when Pope Benedict XVI declares Blessed Kateri a saint Oct. 21. Hundreds of native North Americans in traditional beads, feathers and blankets, carrying drums and wampum belts, will fill the heart of the Vatican. In the often painful history of the Church’s relationship with the original people of this country, there’s never been a moment quite like this.

“it’s very affirming and definitely gives us a whole new perspective on our sense of belonging in the Church,” said Sr. Kateri Mitchell, executive director of the Kateri Conference National Centre in Great Falls, Montana.

There will be all kinds of attempts to claim Kateri. Canadians will claim her as a native Canadian who lived and died in New France.

“This will be a great day for Canadian Catholics and a deep honour for our country,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper when plans to make the Lily of the Mohawks a saint were announced in February.

The Jesuits also have a legitimate claim, having begun their efforts to have Kateri declared a saint more than 100 years ago.

“The Jesuits consider her one of theirs,” said Jesuit archivist Fr. Jacques Monet.

It was two 17th-century Jesuits, Fr. Pierre Colonec and Fr. Claude Chauchetiere, who wrote the first biographies of Kateri. Chauchetiere painted a portrait of her a few years after her death. It was the Jesuits who sheltered her at their mission in Sault Ste. Louis in 1677.

Though she is the Lily of the Mohawks, “It’s not going to be just the Mohawks there (at the canonization),” said Ojibway elder Rosella Kinoshameg a week before she was to fly to Rome with a delegation of mostly Mohawk followers of Kateri. Kinoshameg is a member of the Canadian Catholic Aboriginal Council, the official liaison between Canada’s Catholic bishops and aboriginal Catholics.

There are native people from across North America who identify with Kateri.

“She was born in 1656, died in 1680,” said Mitchell. “There wereno countries, no boundaries at that time. We had our own Turtle Island, which is North America. I just consider her a North American indigenous person.”

But once a saint, Kateri is a saint for the entire Church and an example to the whole world.

“It is a recognition by the Catholic Church of the holiness that exists among the native peoples,” said Monet.

There have been at least 300 books published about the life of Kateri, but few take seriously the historical and cultural circumstances of her life in the middle of the 17th century. A second look at Kateri leads to the conclusion that her fervent, mystical embrace of Christ was never a rejection of traditional Mohawk beliefs but rather a fulfilment of them, writes Mohawk historian Darren Bonaparte.

The tragic results of colonization struck Kateri early in her life. The European smallpox virus raged through her community the winter of 1661-1662. It killed her parents and her baby brother, and left her nearly blind with extreme sensitivity to light.

Kateri was born into wars that raged for control of the fur trade. Her Turtle Clan Algonquin mother, Tagascouita, had been captured in a Mohawk raid on Trois-Rivieres in then New France. By this process Tagascouita became Mohawk and was married to a Kenneronkwa, a war chief. She was born in Ossernenon, a village of the Iroquois Confederacy more than 360 kilometres south of Montreal in modern day New York State.

In the aftermath of the smallpox epidemic, Kateri was adopted by her maternal uncle, a chief of the Turtle Clan.
When she was 10 years old the French army launched an expedition into Mohawk territory to put a stop to Mohawk raids against the Huron, who were allies and trading partners with the French. The Mohawks were selling their furs into the Dutch network of trading posts around modern-day Albany and Schenectady, New York. It took the French a couple of tries, but they eventually looted and burned the village where Kateri was living at the time, Kahnawake or “At the Rapids.”

The French victory opened the door for Jesuit missionaries to move into Mohawk villages. The Jesuits learned the Mohawk language and were careful to ensure converts truly embraced the faith of their free will. Most converts were not baptized until near the end of their lives.

The new religion was splitting Mohawk villages. Kateri was in the middle of the split. Her father opposed the French and their religion. Another chief, Kryn the Great Mohawk, took more than 40 people with him to the Christian village of Kahentake near Montreal in 1673, including Kateri’s older sister.

Her adopted father forbade Kateri from going near the missionaries in an attempt to keep what was left of his family and his village together. But the girl knew her mother had been Christian and contact with the Jesuits became almost inevitable. Stuck in the village one day in 1675 with an injury, unable to work the land with the other women, Kateri ran into Fr. Jacques de Lamberville — a new missionary still trying to learn a very foreign language.

Lamberville baptized her with the name Catherine, after Catherine of Siena, Easter Sunday, 1676.

Meanwhile Kateri’s adoptive parents had been arranging a marriage for her. Marriage was the first and most important obligation of every Mohawk girl to her community. Kateri’s refusal to marry could have only shamed her uncle. Her Jesuit biographers report that the entire village turned against young Kateri.

In 1677 Kateri’s sister sent her husband into the Mohawk Valley. At 20 Kateri was off on a perilous journey with her brother-in-law through Lake Champlain and eventually back to the Christian village of Sault Ste. Louis on the shore of the St. Lawrence River.

In her new village, Kateri formed a close bond with an older woman named Kanahstatsi Tekonwatsenhonko, who became like another mother to her. Kateri also made friends with a young widow named Wari Teres Tekaienkwenhtha.

Kanahstatsi and Kateri’s older sister in Sault Ste. Louis began to pressure Kateri to marry, but the younger woman was fascinated by the life and witness of French nuns. The Jesuits argued native converts were too young in the faith to join an order of nuns. Denied that possibility, in 1679, on the Feast of Annunciation, Kateri made a personal vow of perpetual virginity.

Kateri and her friend Wari Teres became central figures in a movement of young women who took up extreme penitential practices in imitation of the Jesuits. Mostly symbolic self-flagellation was a normal practice among Jesuits of the time. The young women took it to extremes, and none more extreme than Kateri.

Kateri was frail, malnourished and tiny. The penitential practices likely took their toll. On Holy Thursday, April 17, 1680, her dying words were, “I love you, Jesus.”

“Then her face suddenly changed,” wrote the Jesuit missionary Cholenec. “It appeared to be smiling and devout and everyone was extremely astonished. We were all admiring her face and we could not have tired ourselves of looking at her.”

The scars that had marked her since her brush with smallpox seemed to disappear.

For many native people, the Holy Father’s declaration of sainthood for Kateri will only bring Rome up to date. Devotion to her has been building for generations among native North Americans who have long thought of her as their saint.

The native-focussed parish in Thunder Bay, Ont., is called Kitchitwa Kateri. Kitchitwa is the Ojibwa word for holy, blessed or sacred. Since there’s no separate word for saint, the parish will continue to be called Kitchitwa Kateri after her canonization, said Jesuit Father Larry Kroker.

Kinoshameg remembers praying for Kateri’s canonization as a school girl in the 1960s. As a young woman she attended Kateri prayer weekends and over the years she’s been to several Tekakwitha conferences in the United States and Canada. For as long as she can remember, Kateri has been part of Catholic native spirituality.

Though many native parishes seem to be dominated by elders, Kinoshameg believes devotion to Kateri will continue among those under the age of 25.

“I would hope young people would see that here is a young woman who has to be strong and be brave — really brave with all this turmoil going around,” she said.

The story of Kateri gives an example of perseverance that can only help young native people, said Kinoshameg.

“(Kateri) has a significant role to play in the future of the Catholic native Church insofar as she’s young,” said Jesuit Father David Schulist, director of the Anishinabe Spiritual Centre near Espanola, Ont.

The next generation needs to see themselves in the Church.

“There is now somebody they can refer to. Their lives are not seen entirely looking or gazing at a Eurocentric kind of faith,” Schulist said.

To get ready for the canonization, Campion College campus minister Stephanie Molloy organized a mini-pilgrimage on Oct. 10 through downtown Regina for 47 inner city students from Sacred Heart Community School. A large percentage of the students are aboriginal. The kids loved it.

“Definitely there’s the link with young people. She’s the patron of ecology and things that young people care about,” said Molloy.

That connection with youth was central to Pope John Paul II’s thinking when he beatified Kateri in 1980. In 2002 he would make her one of the special patrons of World Youth Day in Toronto.

John Robinson, an elder from Toronto’s Native People’s parish, will be one of about 180 native people from Ontario alone in Rome for the canonization. This begins a new chapter, he said.

“A lot of native people in cities and outside of cities are going to look to Kateri as a saint in a special way,” he said. “This is our first native saint and they’re going to have a lot of respect for it.”