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Relics are making news in the Albany Diocese, too (see related Catholic News Service story in The Evangelist's print edition):

•  "Rescue Saint Kateri Reliquary," a fundraising page at www.gofundmecom, raised $5,000 to cover the cost of purchasing a reliquary containing a piece of St. Kateri Tekakwitha's forearm.

The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Conservation Center in Wading River, Long Island, a Catholic organization, planned on Feb. 5 to pick up the relic of the saint known as the "Lily of the Mohawks." (Relics cannot be sold; the donations were for the reliquary, which had been sold at an auction to a buyer willing to turn it over to the group.)

The center said on the GoFundMe site that it would give the relic to "a Catholic shrine, chapel, or church near where St. Kateri lived for safekeeping and respectful public veneration." That could mean the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, which stands on the site where St. Kateri was born, or the nearby National Shrine of St. Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda.

•  This summer, relics of St. Maximilian Kolbe on a tour of the United States and Canada will make two stops in the Diocese: at the Kateri Shrine in Fonda June 10-12, and at the Sisters of the Resurrection motherhouse in Castleton June 13-15.

The tour is overseen by the Conventual Franciscan friars' Our Lady of Angels province; friars from that province serve at the Fonda shrine and in Rensselaer. St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish friar martyred at the Nazis' Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The relics include strands of hair from his beard, the only remaining first-class relics of the saint.

Learn more about the tour at www.olaprovince.org/index.[[In-content Ad]]

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