Kateri Tekakwitha

Catherine Tekakwitha
Oldest known portrait of Catherine Tekakwitha, circa 1690 by Father Chauchetière
Virgin; Penitent Religious Lay Woman
Born	1656 Ossernenon, Iroquois Confederacy (New France until 1763, modern Auriesville, New York)
Died	April 17, 1680 Kahnawake (near Montreal), Quebec, Canada
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	June 22, 1980, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II
Canonized	expected October 21, 2012, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Major shrine	St Francis Xavier Church, Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada
Feast	July 14 (United States), April 17 (Canada)
Attributes	Lily flower; Turtle; Rosary
Patronage	ecologists, ecology, environment, environmentalism, environmentalists, loss of parents, people in exile, people ridiculed for their piety, Native Americans, Igorots, Thomasites, Northern Luzon, Diocese of Bangued, Diocese of Baguio, Philippines
Controversy	Shunned and Exiled for her Roman Catholic beliefs

Kateri Tekakwitha (pronounced [ˈgaderi degaˈgwita] in Mohawk), originally known as Catherine Tekakwitha informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680) was an Algonquin and Iroquois Native American religious lay woman from New France and an early convert to Roman Catholicism. Consequently, she was shunned and exiled by her tribe. She died at the age of 24 after professing her vows of virginity. Known for her chastity and corporal mortification of the flesh, she is the first Native American woman to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Tekakwitha was beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 1980. On February 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially announced at Saint Peter's Basilica that Tekakwitha will be canonized on October 21, 2012

Origin

Kateri Tekakwitha (the name "Kateri" is derived from French "Catherine", the name under which she was baptized) was born in the Mohawk village Gandaouagué, in northern New York, around the year 1656. She was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Tagaskouita, a Roman Catholic Algonquin. Tekakwitha was born in the Mohawk community of Ossernenon near present-day Auriesville, New York. Tekakwitha's mother was baptized and educated by French missionaries in Trois-Rivières. She was captured at the start of a war with the Iroquois and taken to the Mohawk homeland. She eventually married a Mohawk man and became a part of the community. The village Kateri was born into was incredibly diverse, as a result of the constant influx of captured natives. She was most likely part of the Turtle clan. When she was a toddler, her village moved to a different location, and a smallpox epidemic spread from 1661 to 1663. This epidemic killed the young girl’s family, and destroyed her own good health. This disease outbreak also took the lives of her brother and both her parents. She was then adopted by her uncle, who was a chief of the Turtle Clan. Her mother was Christian and had given Tekakwitha a Rosary but her uncle discouraged religious conversion.^{[citation needed]}

The Jesuits’ record of Kateri states that she was a shy and modest girl who avoided social gatherings and wore a blanket over her head because of the small pox that had destroyed her skin as a child. It was also stated that as an orphan, she was left to the care of uninterested relatives. However, this was probably not the case; the Jesuits wanted to make her seem isolated so as to stand out from the “pagan savages”, in reality she was probably well taken care of by the women she lived with in the longhouse. She was very skilled with traditional women’s work, which included making clothing, belts, mats, baskets, boxes, and preparing food. She was also a part of seasonal planting and intermittent weeding. She was pressured to consider marriage around age thirteen, but she ran away and would not agree to it.

The atmosphere that Kateri grew up in was one of constant change, as the Mohawks interacted with European colonists. Her people were attacked by the French in 1666, and raiding and war were continually a huge part of life for her people. She was not in favor of the torture of captives. After the French defeated her people, Jesuit missionaries flooded her village. She first interacted with a missionary in the spring of 1675 at age eighteen, while resting in bed after sustaining a foot injury. The Jesuit who visited her was named Father Jacques de Lamberville. At the age of 20, Tekakwitha was baptized on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1676, by Father Jacques de Lamberville, a Jesuit.

Tekakwitha exercised physical mortification of the flesh as a route to sanctity. She occasionally put thorns upon her sleeping mat and lay on them, while praying for the conversion and forgiveness of her kinsmen. Piercing the body to draw blood was a traditional practice of the Hurons, Iroquois, as well as the Mohawks. Tekakwitha also believed that offering her blood through penances was a way to imitate Christ's crucifixion.^{[citation needed]} She changed this practice to stepping on burning coals when her close friend, Marie Therese, expressed her disapproval.

Conversion

In 1666, French troops attacked the Mohawk people, burning their villages and food supply. When a peace treaty was drawn up, one of the conditions for this alliance was that they accept Jesuit missionaries. These missions were located near Montreal and came to be known as Kahnawake, the place where Catherine lived. It is clear that most converts were female and they were experiencing a new way of life that they thought came with Christianity. They lived in poverty and depended on people giving then charity. They gave their bodies and souls to God completely and also participated in mortification of their flesh. Although the Jesuits were against this practice and it did not last very long, the women of the village continued to practice it, usually in groups, claiming that it was in order to relieve their people of their past sins. The people of Kahnawake usually understood what was required from a Christian and followed the directions of the Jesuits and other times evaded their control in certain areas. On the whole, they wanted to experience the sacred and spiritual life and they were determined to do this with or without the Jesuits there.

In 1667, when Catherine was 11 years old, she had her first encounter with Jesuit missionaries. Jacques Fremin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron had arrived in the village in order to deal with a peace treaty with the Iroquois. Her uncle was extremely against any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity. She was however enchanted by the teachings of these men and began attending catechism given by Lamberville who, in 1676, judged her to be so advanced in her learning that he suggested baptism for her. This is significant because according to the Jesuit policy, baptism was withheld for new converts usually until they were on their deathbed or until the missionaries could be certain that they would not back down. This shows that Catherine was extremely devout and was prepared to take on this life forever.

After Catherine was baptized, she only remained in the village for another 6 months because her life became more difficult facing the natives. She was continually harassed and was accused of sins such as sorcery and sexual promiscuity, including incest with her uncle. Lamberville suggested that she leave the village and go to the Jesuit mission where she lived for the last 2 years of her life. There, she learned even more about Christianity under her mentor Anastasia, who taught her about the practice of repenting for one’s sins. Catherine, like any devout Christian, feared that she would not be saved and therefore took up mortification of the flesh with a group of women in the mission. When the women learned of the existence of female convents, they wanted to form their own, and although this was discouraged by the Jesuits, Catherine devoted the rest of her short life to her virginity to Christ.

There were pressures by some people in the mission for Catherine to get married, just as there had been in her village. She sought the help of Father Cholenec who asked what she truly wanted. According to his writings, her response was: “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”. It is therefore in 1679, on the Feast of the Anunciation, that her conversion was truly completed and she became the “first virgin”.

Mission du Sault St. Louis: Kahnawake

When she died, Catherine Tekakwitha had been settled at the Christian Iroquois village of Kahnawake since 1677. Since her arrival, she had shared her sister’s longhouse. Many of the people in the longhouse she would have known from her previous village of Gandaouagué. Her mother’s close friend, Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, was matron of the longhouse. Tekakwitha’s introduction to Christianity (as an actual practice) was done by Iroquois women, including Anastasia.

The main purpose of Kahnawake was the religious conversion of the natives. When it began, longhouses were built by the natives, and a longhouse was used for a Chapel by the Jesuits. Being a missionary settlement, Kahnawake was at risk of being attacked by the Iroquois Confederacy.

The Christian Iroquois of Kahnawake honored Tekakwitha after her death, but rarely asked her for any help. It was not in Iroquois custom to ask help from the dead. However, even before being beatified, Tekakwitha was seen as an “unofficial cult figure” in the Kahnawake/Montreal region of Canada. On the Kahnawake reservation, the effects of residential schooling imposed by Christian churches being still fresh in many people’s minds, many do not share such strong feelings for Tekakwitha as a possible Catholic Saint.

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, an area which was considered dangerous and unappealing, due to wars with the Iroquois and the cold weather. Chauchetière was the first to write a biography of Tekakwitha’s life, followed by Cholenec.

Cholenec was present in New France before Chauchetière, having left for Canada in 1672. It was Father Cholenec who introduced whips, irritating hair shirts and iron girdles to Kahnawake in order to regulate Tekakwitha and her sisters’ practices of mortification of the flesh.

Both Chauchetière and Catherine arrived in Kahnawake the same year, in 1677. He was very impressed by Catherine; he had not expected a native to be so pious. He was certain Catherine Tekakwitha was a saint. Jesuits believed that natives needed the guidance of Christians in order to be set on the right path. Chauchetière says that such close contact with natives in Kahnawake changed some of his set notions about natives (his notion of human difference, mostly, changed).

Her sisters, Marie-Thérèse, and Corporal Mortification

Jesuits wanted to guide natives and share their religion with them, but this did not signify that they were willing to share all of their secrets with them. For example, natives were not allowed to join the clergy. The most religious of natives, however, wanted to know more about these secrets that were being kept from them. They wanted full access to the religion. Most converts to Catholicism were women, therefore a lot of the more devout tended to be women also.

Tekakwitha met Marie-Thérèse Tegaiaguenta for the first time in the spring of 1678. Both aspired to better themselves, and this led to their practice of mutual flagellation in secret, away from the Jesuits. Cholenec says that Catherine could flog herself between one thousand and twelve hundred blows in one session. The two native women were attempting to gain a better understanding of Christianity, and wanted to learn more. Marie Skarichions influenced them by letting them know about female nuns and their role in the Catholic religion. Through their mutual quest, the two women had a strong multi-faceted relationship, one described as a very “spiritual friendship” by the Jesuits.

What began with two women eventually became a small group of associates. They asked the Jesuits for permission to form a group of native disciples, and were told they were too “young in faith” for such a group. The women still practiced together, and mortification of the flesh remained in their practices. Marie-Thérèse eventually left the group, supposedly due to personal issues. Catherine tried to reintegrate her into the group until her death.

Baptismal name

Catherine stumbled upon Christianity in 1675, when she was approximately 18 years old. She was baptized on Easter Day in 1676 in the bark-covered chapel of Gandaouagué, which provided her with a new identity. she took the name Catherine, in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena. Catherine of Siena was a 14th-century mystic ascetic saint and it is said that she lived again through the Mohawk woman, poetically speaking. Catherine was a very popular name, and as Cholenec specifies, no one knows who chose that exact baptismal name for her. An important aspect to consider is that ‘Catherine’ was an easy name to pronounce for the natives.

The word Kateri is an Iroquois pronunciation of the French name. Given that the Christian community in Quebec had at least minimal education, it is likely that Tekakwitha also knew how to pronounce her chosen baptismal name in French. Tekakwitha means 'one who puts things in order'.^{[citation needed]} Writing in French, Tekakwitha's earliest biographers, Father Chauchetière and Father Cholenec, from the years 1695 and 1696, give her name as Catherine.

She was beatified on June 22, 1980 by Pope John Paul II. The official beatification register postulated by Rev. Anton Witwer, S.J. to the Roman Catholic Church bears her name as Catherine.^{[citation needed]} The 1961 edition of Acta Apostolicae Sedis refers in Latin to her cause of beatification as that of "Ven. Catharinae Tekakwitha, virginis".

On February 18, 2012, in the consistory for the canonization of causes of canonization held in Saint Peter's Basilica immediately after the consistory for the creation of new cardinals, Pope Benedict XVI decreed that she be canonized. Speaking in Latin, he used the form "Catharina Tekakwitha", but the official booklet of the ceremony called her, both in English and in Italian, "Kateri Tekakwitha".

Epitaph

Bronze statue of Kateri Tekakwitha. Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi Santa Fe, New Mexico

Tekakwitha's grave stone reads:

“

Kateri Tekakwitha Ownkeonweke Katsitsiio Teonsitsianekaron The fairest flower that ever bloomed among red men.

”

Because of Tekakwitha's notable path to chastity, she is often referred to as a Lily flower, a traditional symbol of purity among Roman Catholics. Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily flower and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories. Other colloquial terms 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 called her The fairest flower that ever bloomed among the redmen. Many devotees often use Tekakwitha's virtues as an ecumenical bridge for many Native Americans who were discriminated against by many early European Christians.

Religious veneration

Statue of Kateri Tekakwitha by Joseph-Émile Brunet at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec City.

The process for her canonization began in 1884. In January 3, 1943, she was declared venerable by Pope Pius XII. She was later beatified on June 22, 1980 by Pope John Paul II. On December 19, 2011, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints certified a second miracle through her intercession, signed by Pope Benedict XVI, thereby paving the way for pending canonization. She is the first Native American woman to qualify for Sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. She is scheduled for canonization in October 2012.

Devotion to Tekakwitha is found in three national shrines in the United States, namely the National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, New York, the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York, and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. A statue of Tekakwitha is on the outside of the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, Canada. In 2007, Tekakwitha was featured along with Junipero Serra, St. Joseph, and Francis of Assisi in the Grand Retablo, a newly installed work by Spanish artisans, standing over forty feet high behind the main altar of the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, California.

A bronze statue of Blessed Kateri kneeling in prayer was installed in 2008, created by artist Cynthia Hitschler, is featured along the devotional walkway leading to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Crosse, Wisconsin. Another life-size statue of Blessed Kateri resides at the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima in Lewiston, New York. A bronze figure of Kateri is also on the bronze front doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

Tekakwitha was for some time after her death considered an honorary yet unofficial patroness of Montreal, Canada, and Native Americans. Fifty years after her death a convent for Native American nuns was opened in Mexico, who prays and supports her canonization.

In Leonard Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers, Tekakwitha serves as a symbol of salvation.

Post Mortem

Around the period of the Holy week, there were indications of her weak physical state. When people knew she had but a few hours left some villagers assembled together, along with Chauchetière and Cholenec. Pierre Cholenec provided the last rites. By her side stood Marie-Therèse and another woman to whom Catherine brought guidance. “Take courage, despite the words of those who have no faith”; “Be assured that you are pleasing in the sight of God and that I shall help you when I am with Him”; “Never give up mortification” are examples of advice Catherine shared. Catherine Tekakwitha died on April 17, 1680 at the age of 24 in the arms of Marie-Therèse Tegaiaguenta. Chauchetière reports her final words as “I will love you in heaven”, in a murmur, before she died.

After her death, the people surrounding her body noticed a change in her appearance and as Cholenec reports “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”. Catherine Tekakwitha is said to have appeared before three individuals after her death; Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo (her mentor), Marie-Therèse tegaiaguenta (her companion) and Claude Chauchetière. Anastasia’s account begins when she was crying over the death of her daughter and looked up to notice Catherine “kneeling at the foot” of her mattress “holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun”. Marie-Thérèse reports that she was awakened at night by an individual who knocked on her wall to ask if she was awake and added “I’ve come to say good-bye; I’m on my way to heaven”; feeling intrigued she went outside but there was no one. She heard a distant murmur: “Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I’m going to heaven”. The last visitation supposedly occurred to Chauchetière himself, at her grave. He depicted her as a “baroque splendour; for 2 hours he gazed upon her” and “her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy”.

Claude Chauchetière had the project of building a chapel where she rests and so, in 1684, pilgrimages began in order to honour her. There they turned her bones to dust and set the ashes within the “newly rebuilt mission chapel”. This symbolized her presence on earth. Her physical remains were sometimes used as relics for healing. Written accounts of her life were completed by Chauchetière and Cholenec, ensuring that her narrative lives on.

Reputed miracles

One alleged miracle that has been recorded was experienced by Joseph Kellogg, a non-Catholic who as a young child was captured by Natives in a raid, but eventually brought back to his home. Twelve months after he was kidnapped he caught smallpox and failed to be cured by the ordinary means used by the Jesuits. The Jesuits possessed relics from Catherine Tekakwitha’s grave, but did not want to use them on a non-Catholic. One Jesuit told him that if he would confess and truly embody a Roman Catholic, help would come to him and so Joseph did as asked. The Jesuit gave him rotten wood from Catherine’s coffin, which is said to have made him heal. This example demonstrates that Catherine Tekakwitha’s name was already circulating in the 18th century New France and it also shows that she was becoming known for her professed healing abilities.

Joseph Kellogg’s situation is not the only example of alleged miracles related to Catherine; Father Rémy's hearing was recovered and a nun in Montreal was cured by using Catherine Tekakwitha‘s tooth and by drinking from a dish belonging to her. In those times, this could be used as evidence to show that Catherine was possibly a saint. Sainthood is symbolized by death and rejection of death itself. It is also represented by a duality of pain and a neutralisation of the other’s pain (all shown by her reputed miracles in New France). Claude Chauchetière spread the belief of Catherine’s Sainthood to La Prairie as he told settlers to pray to her to get over their sickness. His words and Catherine’s fame spread all the way to La Chine.

People faithfully believed in her healing powers on the sick, and this is why some wore small bags of earth coming from her grave as a relic. One woman is said to have been saved from a kind of pneumonia (“grande maladie du rhume”), and when she gave the pendant to her husband he was healed from his ills also.

Tradition holds that Tekakwitha's smallpox scars vanished at the time of her death in 1680, causing Pope Pius XII to investigate and declare as an authentic miracle in 1943. There are also claims that many pilgrims at her funeral were healed. It is also held that Tekakwitha appeared to two different individuals in the weeks following her death.

On December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI signed and approved the miracle needed for Blessed Kateri's canonization. The authorized miracle dates from 2006 when a young boy who had suffered a flesh-eating bacterium after sustaining a lip wound during a sports practice caused facial disfigurement. Unable to survive the surgeries, the parents claim to have prayed to Jesus Christ through Tekakwitha for divine intercession. The boy had already received his Last Rites from a Roman Catholic priest before the alleged miracle took place.

Further reading

• Shoemaker, Nancy. "Kateri Tekakwitha's Tortuous Path to Sainthood" in Nancy Shoemaker, ed. Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 49–71.
• Bechard, Henri. "Tekakwitha". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), vol. 1.
• Sargent, Daniel. Catherine Tekakwitha. New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936.

External links

• A Lily Among Thorns
• Canadian Dictionary of Biography Online: Kateri Tekakwitha
• Kateri Tekakwitha website
• Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
• Kateri's Life
• The Life of Catherine Tekakwitha, as narrated by Father Claude Chauchetière, 1695
• Blessed Kateri, Model Ecologist
• "Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha". Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14471a.htm. 
• A Boy, An Injury, A Recovery, A Miracle?
• Holy Rivalry Over Kateri, Montreal Gazette

Stages of canonization in the Catholic Church
Servant of God   →   Venerable   →   Blessed   →   Saint