http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/19/kat ... can-saint/Jesuit priest, Claude Chauchetiere, who examined the steps Kateri and some her peers took in the name of their faith:
‘They covered themselves with blood by disciplinary stripes with iron, with rods, with thorns, with nettles; they fasted rigorously, passing the entire day without eating. These fasting women toiled strenuously all day – in summer, working in the fields; in winter, cutting wood. (…) they put glowing coals between their tows, where the fire burned a hole in their flesh; they went bare-legged to make a long procession in the snows; they all disfigured themselves by cutting off their hair, in order not to be sought in marriage…’
Now why a highly psychoneurotic young girl that brin on her own death with her masochistic practices
became a saint" totally mystifies me.
As it totally mystifies me why Leonard Cohen was fascinated with her.
PS) A deeper view on Kateri Tekakwitha and her era in this essay by historian Nancy Shoemaker:
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/ ... /Wk3_C.pdf
Dem