Kateri’s story (1656 – 1680)
Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in Ossernenon – now known as upstate New York – to an Algonquin Christian mother and pagan Mohawk chief.
Her uncle and aunt adopted her when she was four years old after the smallpox epidemic killed her parents and younger brother; leaving her poc-scarred and partially blind.
Despite her uncle’s opposition to the Christian missionaries working in the area, Kateri was baptised, aged 18, on Easter Sunday by Fr de Lamberville SJ in St Peter’s Chapel in Caughnawaga, taking the name Catherine.
For a year she endured the persecution of her tribesmen and was often deprived of food and pelted with mud by children.
In one incident a young man followed her into her cabin, threatening her with a hatchet to renounce her faith only to be told, “you may take my life, but not my faith”.
Aided by missionaries, Kateri fled to a Christian Indian village near Montreal in Canada where she received her first communion on Christmas Day in 1677.
Two years later, aged 23, on the Feast of the Annunciation she was the first Native American to take a vow of perpetual virginity, which inspired other Indian maidens to do so.
Kateri’s religious fervour inspired her to impose penances on herself that are remarkable by today’s standards, including branding herself with hot irons and walking barefoot in the snow despite pleas for moderation from the Jesuit missionaries.
Despite the severity of her self-imposed penances, she was known for her gentleness, kindness and good humour – devoting her life to piety until her death, aged 24, on April 17, 1680.
Witnesses claim upon her death Kateri’s body began to radiate with light and her poc-scars faded away, revealing her beautiful face.
The relics and remains of Kateri Tekakwitha are enshrined at St Francis Xavier Mission in Kahnawake, Canada.
Journey to sainthood The movement for the canonisation of Kateri Tekakwitha, “the Lily of the Mohawks”, began in 1884 when a conference of American bishops in Baltimore proposed her beatification.
In the early 1930s, Fr John Wynne SJ of Fordham University was appointed postulator for the cause of Kateri Tekakwitha, having come across her story in 1923 while working on the proposed canonisation of Jesuit martyrs.
Fr Wynne brought the case to Rome, supplying evidence of two miracles that occurred in the mid-1930s that could be attributed to the intervention of Kateri.
In Canada, an old missionary was healed when the intercession of Kateri was invoked after he was deemed too old to survive a necessary operation.
In 1934 in Marquette, Michigan, a woman suddenly recovered from pneumonia after a relic of Kateri was pinned to her.
Since then other intercessions by Kateri have been documented including the complete recovery of paralytic Fordham university student, John Szymanski, who was injured playing a game of American football in 1931.
In a 1946 interview with the Glens Falls Post-Star, Fr Wynne reflected on his pursuit of Kateri’s cause; “I thought it was a pity nobody was doing anything about the little girl… it was the impression of all who had known her that she was a saint.”
The Jesuit priest and his five staff, known as ‘The Tekakwitha League’, were somewhat successful in their plight and in 1943 Pope Pius XII declared Kateri ‘Venerable.’
After campaigning for Kateri for almost three decades and living the Jesuit vocation for more than 70 years, Fr Wynne passed away in 1949 at the age of 90.
The pursuit for Kateri’s canonisation was carried on by her many supporters and in 1978 in the Syracuse diocese of New York State, the Kateri Tekakwitha Committee was formed.
In June 1980, 300 years after her death, Kateri became the first Native American to be beatified in a ceremony conducted by Pope John Paul II.
The final miracle to justify elevating Kateri to sainthood was the recovery of then-six-year-old Jake Finkbonner in 2006 from a long battle with flesh-eating bacteria.
Jake, now 12 years old, was brought back from the brink of death after his family prayed while holding a bone relic of Kateri Tekakwitha to his chest – a recovery that has mystified medical professionals.
The journey to canonise Kateri Tekakwitha came to an end on October 21, 2012 as she became named the first Native American saint and the first Canadian saint by Pope Benedict XVI.
The untold miracle
There are no living witnesses remaining to an event that links St Kateri Tekakwitha closely with her tireless campaigner Fr John Wynne SJ.
The only insight available lies in written accounts by Thomas Hughes Senior and his mother.
It has only been thanks to the assistance of Thomas’ daughter Carole Summers that The Record has pieced together the story of Kateri’s untold miracle. In 1915, very few people had cars in New York State.
The streets were mostly wagon tracks used for milkman and bakers’ deliveries while most cities had a trolley system to transport people around.
Nine-year-old Thomas Hughes lived in Amsterdam, New York. Like any nine-year-old boy, he was an active child but early that year he began to walk with a painful limp in his left leg. An x-ray revealed a small pinhole in his left hip and he was diagnosed with “hip-joint disease”.
Under the direction of physician James Conant, Thomas was encased in a plaster cast, to be left on for a year in order to shrink the bone and stop the spread of the disease.
The cast, which encased his entire torso and left leg, leaving only his toes visible, was set to leave Thomas with one leg up to four inches shorter than the other.
After a few months in the cast, Thomas’ mother brought him to the Kateri Tekakwitha shrine in Auriesville at the top of a steep, rugged mountain, carrying him for most of the journey.
The shrine was a rustic chapel, built by Jesuits, and open on all four sides with huge wooden beams supporting the roof.
The altar and beams were filled with plaques describing donor’s stories and draped in discarded crutches, braces and walking sticks.
The rector of the shrine, Fr John Wynne SJ, met the pair and was surprised to see the woman carrying such a heavy load.
In a letter written to Fr Wynne by Mrs Hughes years later, she recalled how the priest gave her a relic of Kateri Tekakwitha and prayed with the pair.
“We prayed the 14 stations and with Thomas on my arms it seemed a very long time, since Thomas was very heavy,” she wrote.
“You gave me a leaflet with the prayer to Kateri Tekakwitha, then I said that my great devotion is to the Blessed Mother, and you told me to recite five Hail Marys in her honour until we noticed a change in Thomas’ life.”
“Now I will tell you, when I put the relic on my boy I do not know if it was emotions but I know that Thomas became pale and I asked for a glass of water for him.”
“So Thomas looked at me and said; I feel fine and well.”
In August that year, the family took a trip to Schenectady to visit a dying aunt. One day shortly before the aunt died she told Mrs Hughes to take the cast off Thomas – his leg was fine. Mrs Hughes believed her, having detected a bad odour coming from the cast.
“With the help of my husband and my uncle, we took Thomas to the top floor of the house and with a hammer we tried to smash the cast,” Mrs Hughes wrote.
She described Thomas’ leg as being the thickness of a broomstick, but, remarkably, it was the same length as the right and he could walk on it without pain.
“We realised that the bad odour was caused by an infection … it was through the bad odour that God made known to us that he was able to walk,” Mrs Hughes wrote.
When Dr Conant took another x-ray of Thomas’ leg there was no sign of a hole.
The non-Catholic doctor signed an affidavit that Thomas was cured and that the healing could not have happened by natural means, so it must have been supernatural.
Mrs Hughes made a vow to come back to the shrine for three Sundays and another vow to dedicate one Sunday of each year to the shrine at Auriesville, both of which she kept.
Thomas Hughes Senior went on to become the pitcher on the local baseball team and a member of the track team at St Charles College in Catonsville, Maryland.
He graduated in 1926 and went on to attend Niagara University to complete a BA.
He married Elizabeth Driska and they had four children. Mrs Summers told The Record that the plaque acknowledging Thomas Hughes’ story has since gone missing from the Auriesville shrine.
In 1982, he signed off his letter to his daughter Carole “as ever, love Dad,” the last account of a living witness to another intercession of Kateri Tekakwitha. His daughter Carole has carried on the family’s devotion to Saint Kateri, visiting the Auriesville shrine yearly to pray and express their gratitude for the healing of her father.