St Kateri Tekakwitha

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Born    1656
Ossernenon, New York
Baptized    18 April 1676
Died    17 April 1680 (aged 24)
Kahnawake (near Montreal), Quebec, Canada
Venerated in    Catholic Church
Beatified    22 June 1980, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II
Canonized    21 October 2012, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Major shrine    Saint Francis Xavier Church, Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada
Feast    17 April[2]
14 July (United States)
Attributes    Lily; Turtle; Rosary
Patronage    ecologists, ecology, environment, environmentalists, loss of parents, people in exile, people ridiculed for their piety, Native Americans
Controversy    Pressure to marry against will, shunned for her Catholic beliefs

Kateri Tekakwitha (pronounced [ˈɡaderi deɡaˈɡwita] in Mohawk), given the name Tekakwitha, baptized as Catherine, and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a Catholic saint and virgin who was an Algonquin–Mohawk. Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, in present-day New York State, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Catholicism at age nineteen. She took a vow of perpetual virginity, left her village, and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, just south of Montreal. She was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter's Basilica on 21 October 2012.

Early life and education

Sculpture of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
Tekakwitha is the name the girl was given by her Mohawk people. It translates to "She who bumps into things."[3] She was born around 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in Northeastern New York state. A nineteenth-century claim that Auriesville developed at the site of Ossernenon has been disproved by archaeological findings, according to Dean R. Snow and other specialists in Native American history in New York.[4]

She was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Kahenta, an Algonquin woman, who had been captured in a raid and then adopted and assimilated into the tribe. Kahenta had been baptized Catholic and educated by French missionaries in Trois-Rivières, east of Montreal. Mohawk warriors captured her and took her to their homeland.[5] Kahenta eventually married Kenneronkwa.[6] Tekakwitha was the first of their two children. A brother followed.

Tekakwitha's original village was highly diverse. The Mohawk were absorbing many captured natives of other tribes, particularly their competitors, the Huron, to replace people who died from warfare or diseases.

When Tekakwitha was around four years old, her baby brother and both her parents died of smallpox. She survived but was left with facial scars and impaired eyesight.[7] She was adopted by her father's sister and her husband, a chief of the Turtle Clan.

The Jesuits' account of Tekakwitha said that she was a modest girl who avoided social gatherings and covered her head because of the scars. She became skilled at traditional women's arts like making clothing, weaving mats, and preparing food. As was the custom, she was pressured to consider marriage around age thirteen, but she refused.[6]

Upheaval and invasions
Tekakwitha grew up in a period of upheaval, as the Mohawk interacted with French and Dutch colonists, who were competing in the lucrative fur trade. Trying to make inroads in Iroquois territory, the French attacked the Mohawk in present-day central New York in 1666. After driving the people from their homes, the French burned the three Mohawk villages. Tekakwitha, around ten years old, fled with her new family.[8]

After the defeat by the French forces, the Mohawk accepted a peace treaty that required them to tolerate Jesuit missionaries in their villages. The Jesuits established a mission near Auriesville, New York. They spoke of Christianity in terms with which the Mohawk could identify.

The Mohawk crossed their river to rebuild Caughnawaga on the north bank, west of the present-day town of Fonda, New York. In 1667, when Tekakwitha was 11 years old, she met the Jesuit missionaries Jacques Frémin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron, who had come to the village.[9] Her uncle opposed any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity. One of his older daughters had already become Catholic.

In the summer of 1669, several hundred Mohican warriors, advancing from the east, launched an attack on Caughnawaga. Tekakwitha, at that point around 13 years old, joined other girls to help priest Jean Pierron tend to the wounded, bury the dead, and carry food and water.[10]

Feast of the Dead
Later in 1669, the Iroquois Feast of the Dead was convened at Caughnawaga. The remains of Tekakwitha's parents, along with others, were to be part of the ceremony.[11] Father Pierron criticized the Feast of the Dead, but the assembled Iroquois ordered him to be silent. Afterwards, however, they relented. Exchanging gifts with priest, they promised to give up the Feast.[12] Garakontié later converted to Christianity.

Family pressures
By the time Tekakwitha turned 17, around 1673, her adoptive mother and aunt tried to arrange her marriage to a young Mohawk man.[13] Tekakwitha fled the cabin and hid in a nearby field and continued to resist marriage.[14] Eventually, her aunts gave up their efforts to get her to marry.

In the spring of 1674, at age eighteen, Tekakwitha met the Jesuit priest Jacques de Lamberville, who was visiting the village. Most of the women were out harvesting corn, but Tekakwitha had injured her foot and was in the cabin.[13] In the presence of others, Tekakwitha told him her story and her desire to become a Christian. After this, she started studying the catechism with him.[6]

Conversion and Kahnawake
Lamberville wrote in his journal in the years after her death about Tekakwitha. This text described her before she was baptized as a mild-mannered girl and behaved very well. Lamberville also stated that Kateri did everything she could to stay holy in a secular society, which often caused minor conflicts with her longhouse residents. These conflicts suggested that there was no violence, which contradicts future texts.[15]

Judging that she was ready, Lamberville baptized Tekakwitha at the age of 19, on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1676.[16] Tekakwitha was renamed "Catherine" after St. Catherine of Siena (Kateri was the Mohawk form of the name).[17][18]

After Kateri was baptized, she remained in Caughnawauga for another six months. Some Mohawks opposed her conversion and accused her of sorcery.[9] Lamberville suggested that she go to the Jesuit mission of Kahnawake, located south of Montreal on the St. Lawrence River, where other native converts had gathered. Catherine joined them in 1677.[19]

Tekakwitha was said to have put thorns on her sleeping mat and lain on them while praying for her relatives' conversion and forgiveness. Piercing the body to draw blood was a traditional practice of the Mohawk and other Iroquois nations. She lived at Kahnawake the remaining two years of her life. She learned more about Christianity under her mentor Anastasia, who taught her about the practice of repenting for one's sins. [Citation Needed]

Father Cholonec wrote that Tekakwitha said:

I have deliberated enough. For a long time, my decision on what I will do has been made. I have consecrated myself entirely to Jesus, son of Mary, I have chosen Him for husband, and He alone will take me for wife.[9]

The Church considers that in 1679, with her decision on the Feast of the Annunciation, Tekakwitha's conversion was truly completed, and with regard to biographies of the early Jesuits, she is regarded as the "first Iroquois virgin".[9] Although Tekakwitha is rather often regarded as a consecrated virgin,[20] she could, owing to circumstances, never receive the Consecration of Virgins by a bishop.[21] Nevertheless, the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins took Kateri Tekakwitha as its patroness.[22]

Mission du Sault St. Louis: Kahnawake
The Jesuits had founded Kahnawake for the religious conversion of the natives. When it began, the natives built their traditional longhouses for residences. They also built a longhouse to be used as a chapel by the Jesuits. As a missionary settlement, Kahnawake was at risk of being attacked by the Iroquois Confederacy members who had not converted to Catholicism.[6] (While it attracted other Iroquois, it was predominantly Mohawk, the prominent tribe in eastern New York.)

After Catherine's arrival, she shared the longhouse of her older sister and her husband. She would have known other people in the longhouse who had migrated from their former village of Gandaouagué (Caughnawaga). Her mother's close friend, Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, was clan matron of the longhouse. Anastasia and other Mohawk women introduced Tekakwitha to the regular practices of Christianity.[6] This was normal for the women in the village, with many of the missionaries being preoccupied with other religious tasks. Pierre Cholenec reported that "all the Iroquois who come here and then become Christians owe their conversion mainly to the zeal of their relatives".[23] Kahnawake was a village set-up like normal Iroquois villages, moving from location to location after running out of natural resources, such as timber and fresh game. The village was originally not wholly French but with northward migration towards Canada started by the Five Nations, the village was starting to gain more native members. The Five Nations all happened to start migrating north[24] around the same time, without any communication between them. In Kahnawake, there was representation from multiple tribes[25] and when the French came, there were people from different ethnicities. The village was recognized by New France as well, it was given autonomy to deal with the problems that would arise. They were also able to form a friendship with New York through this autonomy.

There was fur trade in Kahnawake. The division between the French Church and the natives was clear-cut in the village; there were few interactions between the two.

Kahnawake was drawn into a war among the different tribes that lasted around two and a half years.

Chauchetière and Cholenec
Claude Chauchetière and Pierre Cholenec were Jesuit priests who played important roles in Tekakwitha's life. Both were based in New France and Kahnawake. Chauchetière was the first to write a biography of Tekakwitha (1695), and Cholenec followed (1696).[6] Cholenec, who had arrived first, introduced traditional items of Catholic mortification to the converts at Kahnawake. He wanted them to adopt these rather than use Mohawk ritual practices.[6] Both Chauchetière and Tekakwitha arrived in Kahnawake the same year, in 1677.

Chauchetière came to believe that Tekakwitha was a saint. In his biography of Kateri, he stressed her "charity, industry, purity, and fortitude."[26] In contrast, Cholenec stressed her virginity, perhaps to counter colonial stereotypes characterizing Indian women as promiscuous.[26]

Death and appearances
Around Holy Week of 1680, friends noted that Tekakwitha's health was failing. When people knew she had but a few hours left, villagers gathered together, accompanied by the priests Chauchetière and Cholenec, the latter providing the last rites.[6] Catherine Tekakwitha died at around 15:00 (3 p.m.) on Holy Wednesday, April 17, 1680, at the age of 23 or 24, in the arms of her friend Marie-Therèse. Chauchetière reports her final words were, "Jesus, Mary, I love you."[27]

After her death, the people noticed a physical change. Cholenec later wrote, "This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately."[28] Her smallpox scars were said to disappear.

Tekakwitha purportedly appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death; her mentor Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her friend Marie-Therèse Tegaiaguenta, and Chauchetière. Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her spiritual daughter, she looked up to see Catherine "kneeling at the foot" of her mattress, "holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun." Marie-Thérèse reported that she was awakened at night by a knocking on her wall, and a voice asked if she were awake, adding, "I've come to say good-bye; I'm on my way to heaven." Marie-Thérèse went outside but saw no one; she heard a voice murmur, "Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I'm going to heaven." Chauchetière meanwhile said he saw Catherine at her grave; he said she appeared in "baroque splendor; for two hours he gazed upon her" and "her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy."[6]

Chauchetière had a chapel built near Kateri's gravesite. By 1684, pilgrimages had begun to honor her there. The Jesuits turned her bones to dust and set the ashes within the "newly rebuilt mission chapel." This symbolized her presence on earth, and her remains were sometimes used as relics for healing.[citation needed]

Veneration

Statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha by Joseph-Émile Brunet at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec City
The first account of Kateri Tekakwitha was not published until 1715. Because of Tekakwitha's unique path to chastity, she is often referred to as a lily, a traditional symbol of purity. Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories alluding to her Native American birth. Colloquial epithets for Tekakwitha are The Lily of the Mohawks (most notable), the Mohawk Maiden, the Pure and Tender Lily, the Flower among True Men, the Lily of Purity and The New Star of the New World. Her tribal neighbors – and her gravestone – referred to her as "the fairest flower that ever bloomed among the redmen."[29] Her virtues are considered an ecumenical bridge between Mohawk and European cultures.

Fifty years after her death, a convent for Native American nuns opened in Mexico. They prayed for her and supported her canonization.[citation needed] Indian[clarification needed] Catholic missions and bishops in the 1880s initiated a petition for officially allowing veneration of Kateri. They asked for the veneration of Tekakwitha in tandem with the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and René Goupil, two Catholic missionaries who had been slain by the Mohawk in Osernnenon a few decades before Kateri's birth. They concluded their petition by stating that these venerations would help encourage Catholicism among other Native Americans.[30]

The process for Kateri Tekakwitha's canonization was initiated by United States Catholics at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1885, followed by Canadian Catholics. Some 906 Native Americans signed 27 letters in the US and Canada urging her canonization.[31]

On January 3, 1943, Pope Pius XII declared her venerable. She was beatified as on June 22, 1980, by Pope John Paul II.[32]

On December 19, 2011, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints certified a second miracle through her intercession, signed by Pope Benedict XVI, which paved the way for pending canonization.[33] On February 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI decreed that Tekakwitha be canonized. Speaking in Latin, he used the form "Catharina Tekakwitha"; the official booklet of the ceremony referred to her in English and Italian as "Kateri Tekakwitha."[34] She was canonized on October 21, 2012, by Pope Benedict XVI