By Rosalind Russell – The Anishinabe Spiritual Centre just south of Espanola is hosting an historic gathering this week.
The centre, located on Lake Anderson, is part of a National Visitation of the sacred relics of St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Kateri Tekakwitha according to executive director, Edwina McDonald.
She says the gathering will be a powerful moment of prayer, reflection, and pilgrimage that brings together Indigenous spirituality, Catholic faith, and a shared journey of healing and reconciliation.
McDonald adds the public are invited to attend the mass and ceremony this Thursday, January 15th with mass at 7 pm and the Veneration to follow.
She says the Relics Tour is taking place across Canada and is making its way east, and the centre is proud to be selected as a stop along the way.
St Jean de Brébeuf, considered the Apostle of The Hurons, was a French Jesuit missionary who travelled to New France (Canada) in 1625.
Following his murder at the hands of the Iroquois in 1695, he was beautified in 1925 and was canonized in the Catholic Church in 1930.
St. Kateri Tekakwitha, known as Lily of the Mohawks and Protectress of Canada, Geneviève of New France and Geneviève of Canada, was a Mohawk/Algonquin young woman who converted to Catholicism and is considered the first Native American saint.
She was beautified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica in 2012.
The major relics of the Canadian Martyrs, including the skull of St. Jean de Brébeuf and bones of St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant, will be travelling across Canada for the first time.
The relics have resided principally at the National Shrine to the Canadian Martyrs in Midland, Ontario for the past hundred years.
The three Jesuit saints are among the eight French missionaries who first brought the Gospel to Canada and were martyred during the Huron Iroquois Wars of the early 1600s.
Joining them will be the relic of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first indigenous North American saint, who is a patron of the First Nations peoples.
The purpose of the devotional tour is to bring the relics to parts of Canada whose people can’t easily get to visit the Martyrs’ Shrine, so that Canadians can have an encounter with the saints and receive the graces of healing and reconciliation for themselves, their families, and our country.
Veneration poster and photo of centre provided by Anishinabe Spiritual Centre
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