UTICA!!!!!!!

Pope Canonizes 7 Saints, Including 2 With New York Ties

Andrew Medichini/Associated Press

Nuns held images of Kateri Tekewitha, the first Native American to achieve sainthood, as they waited for the start of a canonization ceremony celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, in St. Peter's Square on Sunday.

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: October 21, 2012

VATICAN CITY — Tens of thousands of faithful, some wearing feathered headdresses and beads, others in colorful Hawaiian shirts and leis, turned out Sunday as Pope Benedict XVI canonized seven saints, including the first Native American and a 19th-century nun who tended to lepers on Hawaii.

Cheers rose from the crowd when the pope named Kateri Tekakwitha, known as “Lily of the Mohawks” and beloved by Native Americans; and Sister Marianne Cope, a German-born nun who was raised in Utica, N.Y., before moving to Hawaii. But the loudest cheers were for Saint Pedro Calungsod, a 17th-century Filipino martyr, from a large contingent of Italy’s Filipino community that came out to celebrate.

The canonization Mass comes amid a meeting of bishops aimed at shoring up religious belief worldwide and several of the saints were missionaries.

Benedict prayed that “the witness of the new saints” would “speak today to the whole church. “May their intercession strengthen and sustain her in her mission to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world,” he added. 

Kateri was born in Auriesville, N.Y., about 40 miles west of Albany, to an Algonquin mother and father who was Mohawk. She was baptized by French Jesuits at age 20 after losing her parents in a smallpox epidemic. After being persecuted by some of her contemporaries for her faith, she fled to an Indian settlement in what is now Canada, where she died at age 24.

“Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her culture,” Benedict said, as he sat on a golden throne wearing a cream-colored mantle with golden stripes and a miter with red trim.

“May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are,” he said. “Saint Kateri, protectress of Canada and the first Native American saint, we entrust you to the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America.”

Native Americans from across the United States and Canada came to Rome to celebrate Kateri, who had long been a symbol of hope. Early Sunday morning, a group from the First Nation of the Ojibwe in Manitoba, Canada, stood in a circle in Saint Peter’s Square sounding round leather drums and singing “Kateri oh Kateri, you’re in my holy plan.”

“We’re very excited and happy to be here,” said one singer, Nancy Bruyere, who wore two long black braids and leather clothing with fringes.

Last year, Benedict confirmed that an 11-year-old Native American boy from Washington State had been miraculously cured from a flesh-eating bacteria after his parents prayed for intervention through Kateri in 2006 — the second miracle needed to confirm sainthood.

Some Native Americans have said that canonizing Kateri is an implicit offense to Native American traditions, but Eleanor Smith, a youthful 80, from Albuquerque, did not agree.

“It’s a combination of your Catholic and your native traditions blending together,” Ms. Smith said who is from Mississippi Choctaw and Navajo heritage. “We all believe in the same creator. God, creator, Father Sky — it’s all the same.”

Others came to honor Saint Marianne Cope, a former mother superior of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis in Syracuse, N.Y., who moved to the island of Molokai in 1883 to tend those with Hansen’s disease, or leprosy. There, she worked with Father Damien De Veuster, a Belgian priest who was canonized in 2009.

Benedict called Saint Marianne, who died in 1913, “a shining and energetic example of the best of the tradition of Catholic nursing sisters and of the spirit of her beloved Saint Francis.”

Kathleen Ford, 67, came with a group from the Diocese of Syracuse. “You can relate to her. She was a forerunner in health care,” Ms. Ford said as she stood in a group wearing white kerchiefs that read, “Sisters of Saint Francis. Beloved lover of outcasts.”

The Vatican confirmed that a woman from Syracuse was cured from complications of pancreatitis in 2005 after praying to Mother Marianne, the second miracle needed to assure the nun’s sainthood.

Yvonne Pascua, 65, said she had come to Rome from Kapaa on the island of Kaua’i for the canonizations of both Saint Marianne and Saint Damien. “After Father Damien, Sister Marianne stepped up to the plate,” she said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said it was an honor to have two saints with ties to New York. “This is extraordinarily blessed day for New York, with now Saint Kateri and Saint Marianne Cope,” he said after Sunday’s Mass.

“We share them. The Canadians love Saint Kateri and the Hawaiians Saint Marianne Cope, but boy oh boy are we ever holding our heads high in New York,” added the cardinal, who is expected to travel to Syria this week as part of a delegation chosen by Benedict to deliver spiritual support to the war-torn region.

Among the other saints named Sunday was Saint Pedro Calungsod, who was killed by tribesmen on Guam in 1672 when he was helping Spanish Jesuits convert the natives; Jacques Berthieu, a 19th-century Jesuit missionary who was killed by rebels in Madagascar; Carmen Salles y Barangueras, a Spanish nun; and Giovanni Battista Piamarta who founded a Catholic press in Brescia, Italy.