Vatican creates first Native American saint Saint Kateri, born to a Mohawk father and an Algonquin mother, is one of 7 saints the Pope canonised on Sunday

Vatican creates first Native American saint

Saint Kateri, born to a Mohawk father and an Algonquin mother, is one of 7 saints the Pope canonised on Sunday

Two nuns hold images of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to achieve sainthood, at the Vatican, on Sunday Vatican City: Pope Benedict created seven new saints on Sunday including the first Native American to be canonised, as the Roman Catholic Church reaches out to its global flock to rebuff encroaching secularism. Thousands of pilgrims from around the world converged on St. Peter’s Square to witness the ceremony recognising the saints, who included Kateri Tekakwitha, a sixteenth-century convert known as “Lily of the Mohawks”. The crowd included hundreds of pilgrims from the United States’ 2.5 million-strong Native American population, of whom 680,000 are estimated to be Catholic, a legacy of the success of early missionaries in converting indigenous people in America. Among them was a 12-year-old boy who survived a potentially fatal flesh-eating virus, which the Vatican attributed to miraculous intervention by Saint Kateri. Many pilgrims waved the flag of the Philippines and held portraits of Pedro Calungsod, killed doing missionary work in 1672, who became the second Filipino saint. Portraits of the new saints, including French Jesuit Jacques Berthieu, Italian priest Giovanni Battista Piamarta, the Spanish nun Carmen Salles y Barangueras, and German laywoman Anna Schaffer hung from the marble facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, and the crowds cheered as each name was called. “Saint Kateri, Protectress of Canada and the first Native American saint, we entrust to you the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in North America! May God bless the first nations!” Pope Benedict said in his homily, in which he alternated between French, English, German and Italian. Saint Kateri, born in 1656 in what is now New York to a Mohawk father and an Algonquin mother, impressed missionaries with her devotion, taking a lifetime vow of chastity and punishing herself by placing hot coals between her toes and sleeping on a bed of thorns. When she died at the age of 24, witnesses said smallpox scars on her face disappeared, and people reported seeing visions of her. This began a centuries-old tradition of veneration culminating with her canonisation.