Kateri - Saint for the faithful or the Church?

On October 21, 2012 the Vatican announced that the Pope had canonized Kateri Tekakwitha, thus making her the first Indigenous North American saint in the Catholic Church.

Now I admit that I am not Catholic and I don't fully understand the saint-making process. However I do have some awareness of the reality of the Catholic Church's interaction with Indigenous communities, and the loss of faith of many Indigenous people in light of the residential school system, as well as other incidents of abuse perpetrated by Catholic church officials such as occurred in Mount Cashel Orphanage.

I know that there are many people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous both, who have strong faith in Kateri and her healing powers. The Vatican's recognition of her sainthood is likely strong acclamation of something they already knew through their faith.

There are also many people for whom this action seems to be 'a reconciliation gesture'. In a recent Globe and Mail article, one woman said:

“I believe the Vatican chooses very timely canonizations,” she said in St. Peter’s Square. “There has been abuse. This will help end some of the pain that happened between the Catholic church and the native Americans and Canadians since the time of the settlements. Now is the moment to give hope to the American and Canadian natives.”

It is very, very possible that I am missing a very big point of this canonization, but I see a fundamental problem with this view.

On one hand, if you are of the Catholic faith, saints are recognized and not created. In other words, they have some special holiness that imbues their actions and indeed their bodies with special powers. Relics and miracles are manifestations of their holiness. If this is the case, and if the Catholic religion only recognizes saints and does not create them, it seems to taint the Church if canonization is undertaken for the selfish and political reason of drawing alienated people back to the Church. Why is canonization required to recognize saints at all? What purpose is achieved by the process? For the truly faithful, canonization might be besides the point. And if you have been alienated through the actions of Church members and the Church itself, how is this going to help?

In terms of political gestures of reconciliation, the formal recognition of an Indigenous saint could well appear to be a token effort unconnected with the crimes perpetrated by individual church members, and the institution that hid their crimes only to allow them to perpetrate again.

To me, it appears that the Church is perhaps trying to draw those who are already within its fold. For those who have experienced abuse at the hands of a priest or nun, or who have heard violent denials and resistance to the truth by Church officials, the canonization is not going to change a thing.

It is an act in and of itself and can be valued as such by the faithful, but it is nothing in terms of reconciliation with victims of crimes.