The company of Jesus and especially the french jesuits They had an important role in the exploration and evangelization of the territory of present-day Canada and the North of the United States. Among these Jesuits was Jacques Marquettewho in 1666 left as a missionary to North America.
The fact of calling the Mississippi «river of the immaculate conception», was part of the evangelization that the Jesuit missions had with the Native Americans.
The Virgin in North America
French missionaries in America were great marian devotees like the Jesuit Marquette, who had a Catholic vision of a ‘meeting of civilizations’, instead of seeing their work as a conquest or a cultural imposition.
In this sense, the author of the poem River of the Immaculate Conception and professor at the University of Saint Thomas of Houston, James Wilson It read: “They set out in their canoes entrusting themselves entirely to the grace of God, entrusting themselves entirely to Mary as the Immaculate Conception, and did not seek to build lasting monuments to their conquests or plant flags.”
Jacques Marquette
“They mainly sought to enter as Agents of Grace among the Indians and live with them, preach to them and commune with them,” he continued.
The current name of the river (Mississippi) It responds to the original name given by the Native Americans, which means something like “great waters”. However, Wilson pointed out, although the consecration of the river to the Virgin has gone unnoticed, it endures “as a testimony of how the grace of God was already working in North America.”
Nearly two centuries following Father Marquette entrusted the river to the Virgin, in 1846, American bishops declared the Immaculate Conception patron saint of the United States.
Kaskaskia
Although this fact is virtually unknown, it still lingers in the memory of a small Illinois community, Kaskaskiawhere the church of the Immaculate Conception is located.
The church was founded precisely by Jacques Marquettewho according to the historian Emily Lyons, had “absolute devotion to the Immaculate Conception” and entrusted everything and place to the protection of the Virgin.
Marquette founded the Kaskaskia mission on Holy Thursday of 1675, a year before his death. Since its founding the church has been moved several times, as Kaskaskia is located on an island and is prone to flooding.
Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kaskaskia
Since it was founded, the church has been in as many as five buildings; the current one, which dates from 1894, was damaged by flooding in 1993. In addition, a year later the diocese of Belville decided to turn the parish into a chapel, since today the town of Kaskaskia has a population that barely exceeds , the 20 inhabitants.
