By CathNews, Australian Catholics Bishop Conference
“It’s my first GoFundMe campaign,” said Bill Jacobs, co-founder and president of the Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Conservation Centre.
Speaking to CNA about the centre’s “Rescue Saint Kateri Reliquary!” campaign, he explained: “Our hope is to raise enough money and get it back into the hands of the Church.”
St Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 as part of the Iroquois confederacy in what is now upstate New York and Southern Canada.
After converting to Catholicism at age 19 and dying at age 24, she was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. She is the first Native American saint to be canonised, and is the patron saint of ecology and the environment, people in exile and Native Americans.
Jacobs said that the centre was alerted to the sale of a reliquary – or special container holding a relic of the saint – through a discussion on Facebook, where users pointed to instances of relics and reliquaries that were being sold on the internet.
According to the Code of Canon Law, it is “absolutely forbidden to sell sacred relics,” although they may be transferred with permission from the Apostolic See.
Through the conversation, Jacobs was alerted of a holder who had come into possession of a reliquary containing what appears to be a first-class relic coming from the bone of St Kateri Tekakwitha, nearly 11cm long.
The fundraiser to purchase the reliquary acknowledges the rarity of the situation as well as the delicate measures that must be taken to recover the relic in a respectful manner. “The relic inside is priceless, and would be acquired as a gift,” Jacobs clarified on the fundraiser page. “Our goal,” the fundraiser continues, “is to protect this sacred relic from desecration and profanation.”
After they rescue the relic and return it to the Church, Jacobs insists on the crowdfunding page that the “relic will never again appear on the market.”
Update from the Saint Kateri Conservation Center (2020): We are happy to report that the reliquary was rescued in 2016 after a successful GoFundMe campaign. Thank you and blessings to all our donors! The Center is seeking to establish a fitting long-term home for the reliquary, potentially including a chapel and Catholic ecology center dedicated to Saint Kateri.