Very big news from south of the border this weekend,as Latin America celebrated the beatification, for the first time, of one of its own.

From AFP:

Tens of thousands of faithful turned out Sunday to witness a ceremony honoring Ceferino Namuncura, the first indigenous South American to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

“Ceferino is blessed,” proclaimed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, deputy of Pope Benedict XVI, drawing a thundering ovation from the crowd of onlookers that swelled to 120,000 people for the event, police said.

More than a century after his death in Rome, Namuncura — the son of a Mapuche Indian chief who fought the European settlers in the late 19th century — became the first person to be beatified outside the Vatican, organizers said.

The ceremony took place in this southern Patagonia town 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

“The Gospel never destroys the values in a culture, but assimilates them and perfects them,” said Bertone, adding that Namuncura “never forgot he what it was to be native and tried to be useful to his people.”

Often the first step toward sainthood, beatification is a long process, which in Namuncura’s case began in 1944 and culminated in a “miracle” in 2000, when a young Argentine girl was allegedly cured of uterine cancer after praying to him.

Pope Benedict XVI officially certified Namuncura’s miracle in July, opening the path to beatification.

The miracle girl, Valeria, her husband and three children were among those who gathered for the beatification ceremony Sunday.

Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, celebrated the beatification mass, which was also attended by Buenos Aires archbishop Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, some 50 bishops from Argentina and Latin America, and by Namuncura’s descendants.

Born August 26, 1886, Ceferino Namuncura was the son of legendary Mapuche chief Manuel Namuncura who, after years of fighting the military and white encroachment surrendered on the advice of a Salesian monk who baptized his son when he was eight.

Ceferino studied at a religious school in Buenos Aires, “so he could be of service to his race” according to historians, and as a priest became renown for his unswerving faith.

He was presented to then Pope Pius X in Rome in 1904, but succumbed to tuberculosis a year later. His remains were taken back to Argentina in 1924 and laid to rest in Buenos Aires.

This celebration happens, conveniently, just two days before the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized.