First American Indian on Track Toward Sainthood
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Jake Finkbonner was near death for months with a flesh eating bacteria, but made a miraculous recovery that the Vatican credited to The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, marking the second miracle for the 17th century Mohawk-Algonquin woman and clearing the way for her to become the first American-Indian saint.
Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree Monday approving the miracle attribute to the intercession of the woman, and she could be canonized as soon as February. The Vatican said it believes that the prayers Finkbonner’s family directed to Tekakwitha were responsible for bringing the boy back from the brink of death.
Finkbonner cut his lip during the last minute of a Boys & Girls Club basketball game in 2006.
“I was running down court with the ball, I stopped in front of the hoop to shoot when I was pushed from behind,” Jake wrote on his website. “I flew forward and hit my mouth on the base of the portable basketball hoop.”
Two days later, he wrote, he was in the hospital with a strep bacteria infection that had spread across his face, head and chest.
“It’s a bacteria that can cause severe infections in unusual circumstances but most of us don’t ever have any problems with it,” said Dr. Christopher Ohl, a doctor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical. “But if all of the circumstances come together and the setting is just right, it can get in through the skin and cause a severe infection.”
Ohl said the chance of survival for people with the bacteria is roughly 50-50.
At the urging of the family’s priest, the Finkbonners began praying to Tekakwitha, who converted to Christianity when she was 18 and became a fervent follower. Her face was scarred by smallpox as a child, but it is claimed that the scars disappeared after she died in 1680 at the age of 24.
“It’s unexplainable as to why he lived,” Jake’s mother, Elsa Finkbonner, told ABC affiliate KOMO-TV in Seattle.
Jake wrote that he has gone through 29 surgeries since he contracted the flesh-eating bacteria and said his experience has made him want to become a doctor.
“Makes me feel like I’m doing something for God, bringing more people back into his community,” he told KOMO.
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Really a 50/50 cahance and they hooked up a native on the cross to cure him?
Ohl said the chance of survival for people with the bacteria is roughly 50-50.
So if they hadnt prayed he still had a 50/50 cahnce to survive…boy the catholics are getting pretty desrperate if they have to go with those odds and get a saint….must be pretty boreing in the vartican.. Isn’t it funny taht billions of prayers have been said for a cure for cancer, yet god helps tebow win football games?
Posted by: frenando | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 8:25 pm
the Vatican – “look at how ‘progressive’ we are; we’re canonizing an INDIAN! an INDIAN WOMAN!!! forget that we ever murdered countless numbers of them! ”
also, it’s pretty ironic that she contracted smallpox when she was 4; considering smallpox was later weaponized against the First Nations, a tool for genocide.
Posted by: kyle | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 8:31 pm
Juan Diego was indigenous to the Americas.
Posted by: Adela | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 8:52 pm
now doesn’t that just cut the cake?? Boy the Pope can sure come up with some STUPID corkers. what on earth???? so much NONSENCE!!! total NONSENCE… talk about …nothing to talk about
Posted by: Jay | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 8:55 pm
I can’t believe a descendant of the original Americans would have anything to do with Christianity.
Posted by: Adam W | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 9:11 pm
Give me a break. If it were a miracle none of the surgeries would have been necessary. The infection would have completely cleared up and he would have been left without a trace of injury or otherwise. I swear…the church is so full of it.
Posted by: ALeigh | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 9:14 pm
I’m american indian and i think this is bunk. Don’t want nothing to do with no white man religion or game.
Posted by: Elizabeth | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 9:25 pm
Praise God, at last the prayers of many are being answered. There will be much excitement at her Shrine in Fonda, NY, just north of the thruway about 60 miles west of Albany. There is another shrine to her in Canawauga (sp?) Canada because that is where she fled and died. Whether this is a true miracle or not, I can’t say, but I believe her intercession has brought favors and healings to many.
Posted by: BridgetoSomewhere | December 20, 2011 December 20, 2011, 10:07 pm
Why can’t people just allow others to have their faith? What does it hurt YOU if the Catholic church canonizes a Native American woman who lived in the seventeenth century? Get over yourselves.
Posted by: John Paul | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 12:24 am
John Paul, it DOES hurt the world when a massive, corrupt cult organization attributes medical phenomena to magic invisible entities (and long-dead Native Americans). It perpetuates a culture of willful ignorance instead of supporting REAL advancement in medical knowledge.
This is not new. Medicine has been viciously fought by religion since its inception. Vaccination has been especially targeted in the past due to it “taking away God’s right to judge people”.
So shut your piehole, you ignorant pissant savage. This is the real world, and people who are still playing make-believe after the age of 10 need psychiatric help or a psychiatric hold.
Posted by: Slash | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 12:31 am
wow, why so much negativity? there is nothing wrong with faith, it generates good will to others and positve energy. destroy god and you destoy all of us. try to find the good in things not the negative. i feel sorry for the people who only post negative comments, your life must be very sad.
Posted by: rizzo | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 5:37 am
you want so much to believe in miracle. if the boy was receiving no, or just basic, medical care and the prayers produced the miracle, then maybe. but the story reads as if the boy was receiving all the medical care possible. many prayers go unanswered and loved ones die in spite of prayers. there is supposed to be no higher power than god then why is prayer necessary to a go between to gain favor, a miracle, whatever. it’s all very confusing. so many don’t have things change in their lives in spite of prayer that one wonders why so many suffer while an individual, a few, are saved from life’s terrible afflictions.
Posted by: david | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 6:14 am
NATIVE AMERICAN. Indians are from India.
Posted by: bob | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 12:15 pm
Regarding stupid comments posted above
“Ohl said the chance of survival for people with the bacteria is roughly 50-50.” that doesn’t mean that this man had a 50-50 chance. Once the disease had spread, the man’s chances were considerably lower.
The article does not state that he underwent 29 surgeries after being cured. Some or all of those surgeries were likely performed in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease -before the cure.
Does anyone know how to read anymore?
Posted by: Jumpinjo | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 12:46 pm
Bob
I’m a Native American. I refer to myself as Indian.
Posted by: oonogil7 | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 3:29 pm
Ugh, the pop is starting to make lunatics look normal. What a whacko he is. Faith should not be trusted.
Posted by: Caitlyn | December 21, 2011 December 21, 2011, 4:49 pm