While Buffalo-Niagara and New York City offer plenty of reasons for the Catholic pilgrim to visit, they are not the only spiritually enriching destinations in New York State.
The I-90 corridor between Syracuse and the state capital in Albany also offers several interesting stops for the Catholic traveller.
Syracuse
Syracuse, which is home to one of America’s best zoos, the Erie Canal Museum and an intriguing Museum of Science and Technology, as well as a museum dedicated to the life of St. Marianne Cope. During the Winter and Spring, Syracuse comes alive cheering on its hometown college basketball team and you can join over 50,000 screaming fans at the Carrier Dome, also known as “the Loudhouse.” If you time your visit for late August/early September, you could also plan a visit to the annual New York State Fair.
St. Marianne Cope Shrine and Museum
“What little good we can do in this world to help and comfort the suffering, we wish to do it quietly and so far as possible unnoticed and unknown.”
-St. Marianne Cope
The St. Marianne Cope Shrine and Museum is located on the campus of St. Joseph hospital, the former saloon that was converted into a hospital by St. Marianne and her fellow sisters of St. Francis; St. Marianne was the first administrator of the hospital. The Shrine and Museum contains a reliquary with a first class relic of the saint available for veneration. The museum tells the life of the saint through two galleries: the first dedicated to her early life and work in the New York area; the second to her time of ministry on the Hawaiian Islands.
St. Marianne Cope (1838-1918) was the first Franciscan woman from North America to be canonized. An immigrant from Germany, she joined the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse in 1862 and established a number of hospitals and schools in central New York. The church in Syracuse was rapidly growing, as European immigrants arrived en masse to help build the Erie Canal and remained to enjoy the fruits of the economic boom that followed. The community of Sisters was actually formed in Philadelphia by St. John Neumann, and then fanned out to open six mother houses across Pennsylvania and New York; Syracuse was the second.
The latter part of her life, where she gave the greatest heroic witness, was spent working alongside St. Damian of Molokai, ministering to the female lepers of Hawaii and then taking over St. Damian’s ministry to the male lepers after his death. Within five years of her arrival in 1884, she had opened three medical facilities in Hawaii: one for the healthy children of leprous parents, a general hospital in Maui, and a home for homeless women and girls with leprosy in Molokai. Her courageous work in Hawaii was remarkable at the time, as she and her six companion sisters went to the island to care for the lepers at a time when many others refused.
Auriesville and Fonda
One of the most fascinating saints of the North American Church is St. Kateri Tekakwitha, known as the “Lily of the Mohawaks.” She was a courageous young Mohawk girl who converted of her own free will to the Catholic faith. She endured great suffering on account of her Christian faith, dying at the tender age of twenty three.
It was in the village of Fonda where Kateri was born in 1658, lived most of her life, and where she experienced her conversion and baptism into the Catholic faith. Pilgrims can stop and visit her birthplace at the St. Kateri National Shrine and Historic Site. The site of the old village was discovered by a Franciscan priest in the 1950s and excavated. Today, it is the only completed excavated Iroquois Indian village in the U.S. A museum and shrine to St. Kateri are located a quarter mile from Fonda in a two hundred year old converted barn. The upper floor houses the St. Peter Chapel commemorating the baptismal site of St. Kateri and the lower level houses a museum containing many Iroquois artifacts. There is also an outdoor spring which is believed to be the saint’s baptismal spring, as well as various hiking trails through the property.
“We begged God to accept our lives and our blood and unite them to His life and His blood for the salvation of these tribes.”
-St. Isaac Jogues on the martyrdom of St. Rene Goupil
From Fonda, it is a short 5 mile drive to The Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville. It is a 400 acre campus maintained by the Jesuits that stands over the site of the Ossernenon Mohawk village; the village where three of the North American Martyrs – St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil and St. Jean Lalonde were murdered by the Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy in the mid seventeenth century. Together with St. Jean de Brébeuf and five of his companions martyred in Canada by the Iroquois, these men are collectively known as the North American martyrs. They were the first missionaries to have been killed for the faith in North America.
At the centre of the shrine is the circular Coliseum church, inspired by one of the ancient sites of martyrdom: the Roman Coliseum. The exterior has 72 doors, recalling the early disciples, and eight double doors representing each of the North American martyrs. The interior can accommodate up to 10,000 pilgrims and houses the relics of the martyrs and the Blessed Sacrament. Its columns contain small wooden crosses inscribed with the name of Jesus, recalling how St. Isaac Jogues would go about carving crosses and the name of Christ into the trees surrounding this Mohawk village. The altarpiece is designed to resemble the pointed wooden palisades used as fencing around native villages.
On the grounds of the shrine, pilgrims will find two nineteenth century chapels. The first chapel, built in 1885, is the original shrine to the martyrs. A larger chapel was built in 1894, which actually consists of two adjoining chapels: the Kateri Chapel and the Martyrs Chapel. The Martyrs Chapel contains a reliquary with the bone fragment of St. Jean de Brébeuf. In the chapel, you will also find a wooden statue of Our Lady of Foy, brought to the Mohawk lands by the early Jesuit missionaries and believed to be the earliest representation of Mary in New York. The Kateri Chapel houses a reliquary containing a bone fragment of St. Kateri and a mass is offered weekly in the chapel in thanksgiving for her canonization.
From the shrine there is a path lined by statues and smaller chapels that leads down to the ravine, the same ravine where St. Isaac buried the body of St. René Goupil, following his murder in 1642. St. Rene was a lay Jesuit missionary who accompanied St. Isaac Jogues on his missions to the Huron communities; he was the first of the North American martyrs to be killed. One notable site along the path is “Theresa’s Rosary,” commemorating a 13 year old Native American girl who was captured along with St. Isaac and who would discreetly pray the rosary with stones, to avoid drawing attention from her captors. You can end your visit to the shrine praying the Stations of the Cross, erected on an esplanade overlooking the scenic Mohawk River.
Albany
You can end your trip in Albany, to visit the impressive state capitol, where many presidential aspirants cut their teeth, including Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated in 1924. The capitol is set amid the fountains, towers and giant egg of the Empire State Plaza. Just off the Plaza, you can visit the New York State Museum (the largest state museum in the country), tour the Governor’s Mansion and pray at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, situated atop of Madison Hill overlooking the mighty Hudson River.
Albany is also a great departure point for one of the most important shrines in the northeastern United States: the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy, located in Stockbridge Massachusetts about 45 minutes from Albany.
National Shrine of the Divine Mercy
In the heart of the Berkshire Hills, just outside the town of Stockbridge, is the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. It is located on 375 acres, at an elevation of two hundred feet atop Eden Hill. After the shrine in Czestochowa (Poland), it is arguably the most important shrine to Divine Mercy in the world.
The risen Lord’s first great act after the Resurrection was giving the apostles in the Upper Room the authority to forgive sins. It is this pivotal act of Divine Mercy that is recalled at the shrine built atop Eden Hill.
Eden Hill is also the American home of the Congregation of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, the authentic promoters of the devotion to the Divine Mercy. The congregation, which was founded in Poland in the seventeenth century, is charged with promoting the revelations of Our Lord concerning His Divine Mercy across the world. These revelations were received by the Polish mystic nun, Saint Faustina Kowalska, in 1938 and recorded in her 600 page diary. As St. John Paul II told us, there is nothing particularly new about these revelations; it is simply Jesus reminding us that mercy is love’s second name.
Eden Hill is historically important to the spread of the Divine Mercy devotion. Just a few years after the death of St. Faustina in 1938, the revelations of Divine Mercy were smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Poland to America, by Fr. Joseph Jarzebowski. He received a written copy of the revelations from Blessed Michael Sopocko, who was the confessor to St. Faustina. Fr. Joseph made it to Washington, D.C. in 1941, where he shared the revelations with the small community of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. The Marian Fathers soon moved to Eden Hill in 1943, using the new novitiate house there as their base of operations for operating the printing presses that would spread the message of Divine Mercy across the world. With Europe under occupation and in the throes of war, this was the most efficacious means by which the message of Divine Mercy could be spread to souls desperately in need of hearing it.
The idea to build a shrine to the Divine Mercy on Eden Hill came several years later in 1950, at the suggestion of the faithful who received the message of Divine Mercy and would write to the Marian Fathers telling the stories of miraculous healings tied to the devotion. In this way, the shrine became a monument to the many miracles that flowed from the propagation of the message of divine mercy. Decades before the Feast of Divine Mercy was declared a universal feast of the Roman Church, and long before St. Faustina was even canonized, there was a budding devotion to Divine Mercy in the heart of New England.
There is no shortage of activities for pilgrims to fill their day on Eden Hill.
A typical schedule for families making the pilgrimage to the shrine includes daily confession from 1-2pm, holy hour in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament (1:00pm), Rosary (1:30pm), Holy Mass (2:00pm) and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at 3pm (on the weekdays, this is usually in the Shrine Church, but on the weekends, it is at the outdoor altar to accommodate the larger crowds).
The Shrine Church honors both the Divine Mercy and Mary Immaculate. Above the main altar is the famous painting of Divine Mercy, based on the vision that St. Faustina received of the merciful Christ. Above the painting is a marble statue of Mary Immaculate, set against a mural depicting her coronation. The stained glass windows depict biblical scenes of God’s mercy. You will also want to set aside time to pray before the first class relics of St. Faustina, St. John Paul II, and St. Stanislaus Papcynski, the founder of the Marian Fathers.
The sprawling grounds provide many opportunities for quiet prayer and reflection. The most popular sites on Eden Hill include the Shrine Church, the life size stations of the cross, and the replica of the Lourdes Grotto. There is also an outdoor Holy Family Shrine, with its pergola and reflecting pool, and a touching small indoor shrine to the Holy Innocents. Also prominent on the grounds is the Mary Mother of Mercy Shrine, which is the outdoor altar used for the nationally televised mass on Divine Mercy Sunday that can attract up up to 20,000 pilgrims to the shrine grounds for that day.
CATHOLIC CONCIERGE 
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