Relics of Canadian Martyrs will tour western Canada for jubilee year

The skull of St. Jean de Brebeuf will visit Vancouver for the first time ever, along with his fellow Canadian Martyrs St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant, and Lily of the Mohawk St. Kateri Tekakwitha. / Credit: The Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs

Vancouver, Canada, Dec 29, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

If the faithful can’t go to the shrine, bring the shrine to the faithful.

So it will be with the relics of the Canadian Martyrs, usually housed in their Midland, Ontario, shrine, which will make their first tour of western Canada as part of the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope.

The Shrine of the Canadian Martyrs has been designated as an official pilgrimage site for the Jubilee Year of Hope. However, because of Canada’s size, it was recognized that not everyone could reasonably make the trip so the tour was planned, with stops across the Prairies and west of the Rockies.

The major relics of the Canadian Martyrs on tour will include the skull of St. Jean de Brebeuf and bones of St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant. The three men were among the eight French missionaries who first brought the Gospel to Canada and were martyred during the Huron-Iroquois Wars of the early 1600s.

Joining them will be a relic of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Indigenous North American saint and the patron of First Nations peoples.

For the director of the martyrs’ shrine, Father John O’Brien, the Canadian Martyrs harken to an age long gone — before modern history and its complications.

Originally from Mission, British Columbia, and a former instructor at St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi Colleges, O’Brien told The B.C. Catholic that “the Canadian Martyrs retrieve for us an era of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations that obviously precedes residential schools by several centuries.”

“[The martyrs] represent a dream for Christian community which is in some ways very Canadian — if we consider that Christ draws all peoples to himself,” he said. “Their original mission was to have a place where people of different ethnic backgrounds would live together united in their common faith.”

They may “help us recognize that reconciliation can be a process that can be informed by the projects of the past,” he said.

For more information about where the relics will be touring, visit martyrs-shrine.com/relic-tour.

This story was first published by The B.C. Catholic and has been adapted by CNA, and reprinted here with permission.