
The major relics of three Canadian Roman Catholic martyrs will be on display this week in Kamloops for the first time ever, alongside a relic belonging to the church’s first Indigenous saint.
The skull of St. Jean de Brebeuf and the bones of St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant will be at Sacred Heart Cathedral, 255 Nicola St., on Friday. For most of the last century, the shrines of the three Jesuit saints have been on display at the National Martyr’s Shrine in Midland, Ont.
Also on display will be the relic of St. Kateri Tekakwatha, the first Indigenous North American saint. She was venerated in 1943 and canonized in 2012.
“The purpose of the devotional tour is to bring the relics to parts of Canada whose people can’t easily get to visit the Martyr’s Shrine, so that Canadians can have an encounter with these great saints and receive the graces of healing and reconciliation for themselves, their families and our country,” reads a post about the tour on the Martyr’s Shrine website.
St. Jean de Brebeuf, St. Charles Garnier and St. Gabriel Lalemant were among a group of eight French missionaries credited with bringing the gospel to Canada in the 1600s. Their relics were taken on a tour last year of Jesuit schools in the U.S.
The Canadian tour started in Calgary on New Year’s Eve and the first leg is slated to wrap up in Thunder Bay, Ont., on Feb. 10.
The tour is taking place in 2025 because it is a jubilee year for the Catholic Church.