Mohawk woman becomes North America's first Aboriginal saint

[struggle4progress]

Kateri Tekakwitha canonized at the Vatican
The Associated Press
Published Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012 7:07AM EDT
Last Updated Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012 2:28PM EDT

VATICAN CITY -- Some 80,000 pilgrims in flowered lei, feathered headdresses and other traditional garb flooded St. Peter's Square on Sunday as Pope Benedict XVI added seven more saints onto the roster of Catholic role models in a bid to reinvigorate the faith in parts of the world where it's lagging.

Two of the new saints were Americans: Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint from the U.S., and Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun who cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii.

It seemed as if a third saint, Pedro Calungsod, a 17th century Filipino teenage martyr, drew the biggest crowd of all, with Rome's sizeable Filipino expat community turning out in flag-waving droves to welcome the country's second saint.

In his homily, Benedict praised each of the seven as heroic and courageous examples for the entire church, calling Cope a "shining" model for Catholics and Kateri an inspiration to indigenous faithful across North America ...

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/mohawk-woman-becomes-north-america-s-first-aboriginal-saint-1.1004239

[trotsky]

1. A cynical person might call this, like most canonizations, a marketing move.

However I don't think that observation would be unique to cynics.

[Fresh_Start]

2. that was my reaction as well

the church has always been a highly political organization

[rug]

3. There was another American canonized as well.

October 20, 2012

A German-American nun will become a saint Sunday, nearly a century after her death. Mother Marianne Cope is the second person to be honored in this way for caring for people in Hawaii with leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease.

During a tragic era in Hawaiian history, more than 8,000 people with leprosy were banished to Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on the island of Molokai. Back then, there was no cure. The patients were treated as outcasts until a Belgian priest, Father Damien, came to care for them in 1873. Eventually he contracted the disease himself and died. He was canonized by the pope in 2009.

Just five months before Damien's death, Cope arrived in Kalaupapa. She worked in Hawaii in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sister Alicia Damien Lau says Cope risked her life to care for people with leprosy.

"They had no idea what leprosy was all about and did not speak the language," she says. "They didn't understand the culture."

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/20/163269139/mother-of-outcasts-to-be-a-saint-for-leprosy-work

Too bad Hitchens isn't around to tell everyone what a fraud she was.

[xfundy]

4. Coincidence?

Learned recently that Mormon "church" founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have been visited by an "angel" who described himself as "Native American," yet was "white," as he lost his natural skin color as a result of dying and going to heaven.

These idiots hate anyone different from them, even, an especially, based on their inherent pigmentation.

[Iggo]

5. In heaven everyone's white, friend!

Praise be!

[applegrove]

6. My kitchen window in Montreal looked out over the river & church where

Kateri Tekakwitha is entombed.