Feast Day July 14
Saint Kateri Tekakwitha is widely seen as a bridge between Native American and European cultures. In the centuries since her death, she has had devotees ranging from French priests to Native American mystics to the Canadian Jewish songwriter and author Leonard Cohen. She is associated with outsiders, exiles, orphans, and people ridiculed for their beliefs. She is also patroness of Indigenous people, patroness of ecology and ecologists, and Protectress of Canada. She died on April 17, 1680, at the age of 23 or 24 and tradition holds that her last words were “Jesus, Mary, I love you.”
(from katerishrine.org)
Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine in Fonda, New York, was established by Fr. Thomas Grassmann OFM Conv. The Shrine continues as a ministry of the Conventual Franciscan Friars. (Keep reading to learn more about Friar Grassmann and the discovery of St. Kateri’s village.)
St. Kateri’s feast day weekend is celebrated with special presentations, Mass with a Traditional Purification Rite and Solemn Blessing with the relic of Saint Kateri, Burning of Prayer Petitions, and music by the Akwesasne Mohawk Choir.
On September 27, as part of the Jubilee Year, the Shrine is hosting a Pilgrimage of Hope for Creation. The Pilgrimage will also mark two important anniversaries: it is the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creation (Laudato Sí), and the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on the Care for Creation (also called Laudato Sí).
These anniversaries reflect Saint Kateri’s unique place in the Catholic church as a native North American and what that means as far as how her culture informed her Catholic faith.
Discovery of St. Kateri's Mohawk Castle/Village of Caughnawaga
In 1938, Friar Thomas Grassmann (author, professor, and archeologist) discovered the site of St. Kateri Tekakwitha’s (+1680) Mohawk Castle/Village of Caughnawaga. Grassmann identified post molds of a stockade line, pinpointing the location and led the thorough exploration of the site from 1950 to 1956.
Excavation revealed a fortified, gated wooden double stockade, called a “castle,” and 12 long houses, covered with elm bark, inhabited by the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk from 1666-1693. Because of this, the Bishop of Albany offered the site to the Conventuals to create a shrine dedicated to “The Lily of the Mohawks” with Grassmann named as the first director. It was only in 1950, however, working together with the New York State Archaeological Association of which he was a Fellow, that Grassmann was finally able to excavate the site. His book, The Mohawk Indians and their Valley, became a noted scholarly resource on the early history of the Mohawk Nation.
The fortified stockade had been inhabited by the Turtle Clan of the Mohawks from 1666-1693. It was here where Kateri Tekakwitha had lived for part of her life and where she had been baptized. Having created a shrine as well as a Mohawk-Caughnawaga Museum, in 1973, the Caughnawaga Castle Site was declared a National Historical Place. Caughnawaga remains the only completely excavated Iroquois village in North America. Grassmann was honored by burial on the site he excavated.
The site became a Shrine in 1980 when Kateri was declared Blessed by Pope John Paul II on June 22. Only then could she be venerated officially. Canonized to Sainthood on October 21, 2012, Saint Kateri is patroness of peace and ecology.
-Excerpt from friar Joseph Wood’s presentation on Franciscans & Culture.
Learn more about Saint Kateri and the National Shrine and Historic Site: katerishrine.org
