Relics of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, known as the “Lily of the Mohawks” and of three of the Canadian Martyrs will be in Saskatoon on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Photo by Bishop Mark Hagemoen)
The diocese of Saskatoon welcomes a national tour of saints’ relics to the Cathedral of the Holy Family on Friday, Jan. 24. The event will begin with an opening and the praying of the Rosary at 5:30 p.m.
Bishop Mark Hagemoen will preside at celebration of Mass at 6:00 p.m. Jan. 24 followed by time for prayer and veneration of the relics until 9:00 p.m. at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, 123 Nelson Road, Saskatoon (corner of Attridge Drive and Forestry Farm Park Drive.
The Canadian Martyrs tour includes major relics of three Canadian Martyrs, including the skull of St. Jean de Brébeuf and bones of St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant, which will be travelling across Canada for the first time in 2025.
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.
Also part of the national tour will be the relic of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first indigenous North American saint, who was canonized in 2012 and is a beloved patron of the First Nations peoples.
The purpose of the devotional tour is to bring the relics to parts of Canada whose people cannot easily visit the Martyrs’ Shrine, giving more Canadians an opportunity for an encounter with the relics of these great saints, and to receive the graces of healing and reconciliation for themselves, their families, and our country.
The relics will first be taken to dioceses across western Canada, returning to Martyrs’ Shrine for the summer season and continuing with an eastern Canada tour in the fall of 2025.
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