HEAVEN AND EARTH

ROME, October 21, 2012 – This morning in St. Peter’s Square Pope Benedict XVI formally inducted Kateri Tekakwitha into the company of Catholic Saints. Father Claude Chauchetiere’s quest to obtain recognition of her surpassing spirituality, begun in 1680 with a request to exhume her body and bring it into the mission chapel, has succeeded, and she becomes the first native American saint.

It’s nearly midnight and tomorrow, October 21, is a day many in Christendom have been waiting for, to celebrate the canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha. I journeyed up to Florence today to see again the splendors of the Renaissance and ruminate in this fourth of a five-part series about our Mohawk maiden’s place in the order of things.

ROME – Unlike many empires who sought to conquer the world, Rome never thought of itself as a superior race. Romans prided themselves on diversity and their…

I returned to the Sistine Chapel today with new eyes and a new heart –

Earlier, the sun blazed warm and bright on a run through the park to Villa Borghese….

Staff Picks Press publishes novelized biography in time for canonization, October 2012.

The ticket made it real at last. On Sunday, here in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI will canonize Kateri Tekakwitha, a young Mohawk woman from the 17th century, the first native American saint. The Swiss guard handed it to me: “The mass begins at 9:30. We expect twenty to thirty thousand. You should be here by eight.”