Complex Emotions Over First American Indian Saint

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Sharon Otterman

A statue at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, N.Y.,
where the inclusion of American Indian practices is stressed.

NEW YORK--- This October the Vatican will canonize a fourth saint from the Mohawk Valley: Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman born in 1656. In the valley where Kateri grew up, two very different shrines honor her. At the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, built to honor the slain Jesuits, there is a wooden altar to Kateri inside the 6,500-seat iron-and-brick coliseum. Across the river, the much smaller shrine in Fonda focuses on devotion to Kateri. It has an impressive name — the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine — but the sanctuary is up in the eaves of a simple 200-year-old barn, where a faded museum of Native American artifacts occupies the ground floor. [link]