Cloud of Witnesses features saints as a focus of racial reconciliation

PHOTOS COURTESY NATIVITY OF MARY

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Nativity of Mary Church in Bloomington is home to a special display of artwork undertaken after the death of George Floyd that emphasizes the diversity of saints and the unity of the faith they shared.

The Cloud of Witnesses, located in the church’s gathering space, features eight framed images of men and women representing various ethnicities, each accentuated with a hand-painted gold halo symbolizing their sainthood.

“The saints reveal to us the reality that the Christian message is about conformity to Christ,” said Father Nathan LaLiberte, 36, pastor of Nativity of Mary.

“The fact that they have come from a variety of backgrounds, cultures and races, and yet have pursued a singular focus, is amazing in itself,” he said. “Then, reveal some of the heroic things that these individuals did, and they truly are inspiring witnesses for us to follow.”

The project began after the May 25, 2020, police-involved killing in Minneapolis of Floyd, who was Black, and the protests that followed.

“A parishioner, Ben Heidgerken, contacted me about his desire to have some sort of a response that was ‘Catholic’ to our community, which has a racial background that is largely white, with a minority of African, Hispanic (and) Asian members,” Father LaLiberte said.

The two brainstormed about an art series depicting saints, and Heidgerken, 37, identified eight saints whose lives involved cultural misunderstanding and conflict: St. Juan Diego, St. Martin de Porres, St. Pedro Calungsod, Blessed Christian de Cherge, St. Josephine Bakhita, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Teresa of Kolkata and Venerable Henriette Delille.

“By telling their stories, we learn to imitate the virtues that they displayed in the face of the conflict they experienced,” said Heidgerken, adjunct professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, and an associate professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

For the past five years, he has also taught an American religious history course at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul. The course influenced his desire to see Cloud of Witnesses brought to fruition.

“In my teaching of American religious history at The St. Paul Seminary, I have often championed the stories of saints as a central means to building up the body of Christ,” Heidgerken said. “Yet I realized that I had never concretely worked to tell these stories in my own parish community.”

“Helping our parish to build up to the fullness of the body of Christ is the goal of the Nativity of Mary Cloud of Witnesses,” he said.

The 11-by-14-inch saint images were created by parishioner Erin Wee, 28, an artist who serves as the director of admissions and marketing for Nativity of Mary Catholic School. She worked from photos of the saints and when reference photos were not found for some, she suggested that parishioners serve as models for her work.

“I delegated that to Father LaLiberte, who reached out to parishioners with similar ethnic backgrounds of the saints,” Wee said. “He took a few photos of each person in different poses and sent them to me.”

Parishioner Weldon Makori, 23, received the invitation from Father LaLiberte; his face became the image of St. Martin de Porres, a native of Peru who experienced persecution because of his race.

Makori, who came to Bloomington from Kenya 15 years ago with his family, said he was “extremely honored” to participate in the Cloud of Witnesses.

“My spiritual journey has not been a simple one; I’ve had lots of ups and downs,” Makori said. “Erin’s artistic ability is incredible, and I was speechless when I saw myself in that realm. I could envision that spiritual life that I’ve been discerning and praying about.”

“The whole experience continues to have an impact on me and my faith,” he said.

Wee, who graduated from the College of St. Benedict in Collegeville with a degree in communications and art, used digital art for the Cloud of Witnesses, creating each piece on an iPad Pro tablet computer.

“Digital art is great for me as an artist and also the mother of three young children as I don’t have to take out paints, etc., to work,” Wee said. “It also gives me some flexibility for reproducing the images.”

She started the project at the end of February 2021 and completed it in May, often working at her table with her children coloring next to her, she said. “I would talk to them about each saint and who they were as people; that was really powerful.”

The Cloud of Witnesses was unveiled at Nativity of Mary on Pentecost Sunday, May 23. In his homily, Father LaLiberte noted that the feast of Pentecost “reveals to the world that God is not bound to one culture, race or location, but is desiring to be experienced by every people.”

“‘Cloud of Witnesses’ comes from the Book of Revelation text that speaks about there being, in heaven, a cloud of witnesses from every nation, tongue and people, who are before the throne, praising God for all eternity,” Father LaLiberte said.

The installation has led to “new and unexpected conversations” with members of the parish community, Heidgerken said. He plans to take a traveling set of the images to other parishes during Advent and Lent, beginning with St. Bonaventure in Bloomington.

His presentation on the collection will include breakout time for prayer, small group discussion, and a history of Catholicism and slavery, he said.

The original images remain on display at Nativity of Mary. “Now, when we gather for fellowship in our gathering space, we are surrounded by examples who pray for us and inspire us on our journey toward the kingdom of God,” Heidgerken said.

For more information on the Cloud of Witnesses, including short videos on each saint, go to nativitybloomington.org/About-Us/Nativitys-Cloud-of-Witnesses. To host the art or presentation, Heidgerken can be reached at [email protected].

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SAINTS’ STORIES

St. Juan Diego was a member of the Chichimeca people in what today is Mexico. He converted to Christianity 10 years after the fall of Tenochtitlan, the center of the Aztec Empire, in 1521. He received visions from the Blessed Virgin Mary, culminating in Our Lady’s gift of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He spent the rest of his life serving pilgrims to the site.

St. Martin de Porres was a mixed-race (African and possibly indigenous) lay Dominican in what has become Lima, Peru. He was denied full membership in the Catholic religious orders of his day because of his racial heritage. He worked in the infirmary of his religious community and was known for his miraculous healings there.

St. Pedro Calungsod was a Filipino lay catechist of the 17^th century. At a very young age, he left his people to study and mission with the Jesuits in the Marianas Islands. He was martyred on the island of Guam when he was 17 years old.

Blessed Christian de Cherge was a Frenchman whose Trappist religious community lived in northern Algeria. During the Algerian Civil War, Islamic extremists endangered the peace of all peoples in the country; Father de Cherge’s community remained in solidarity with the Muslim community there. He was martyred by these extremists in 1996.

St. Josephine Bakhita was a Sudanese woman who was held as a slave in the late 19^th century by Turkish Muslims and Italian Christians. While still a slave, she was brought to Italy, where she embraced Christianity while living with the Canossian Sisters. She fought to gain her legal freedom in Italy and spent the rest of her life in prayer and service with her religious community.

St. Kateri Tekakwitha was a Mohawk laywoman whose family died of smallpox when she was very young. At the age of 20, she accepted baptism and devoted her life to Mary. She died separated from her tribe when she was 24.

St. Teresa of Kolkata was an Albanian woman who spent most of her life in missionary endeavors in India. Inspired by Christ in 1946, she started her own religious order called the Missionaries of Charity, who were dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor in India. For much of her life, she experienced a deep spiritual union with the poor and Christ known as the Dark Night of the Soul.

Venerable Henriette Delille was a mixed-race woman born in the stratified society of antebellum New Orleans. She became the first mother superior of the Sisters of the Holy Family, a religious order for mixed-race women who educated slaves prior to the Civil War, when it was illegal to do so. She died in 1862, the year before the Emancipation Proclamation.

— Ben Heidgerken