Argentine Indian beatified by Catholic Church in Patagonia

: Ceferino Namuncura became the first Argentinian Indian to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, in a ceremonial before 10s of one thousands including Indians in bright ponchoes and plumed headdresses.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, led the blessedness in the wind-swept Patagonian community of Chimpay, as traditional Catholic religious rites amalgamated with sporadic drumming, moo-cow horns and chants in the Mapuche language.

Namuncura, who lived from 1886 to 1905 and is revered for his piousness and humility, have a broad followers among Argentina's poor. Police estimated at least 80,000 people attended the beatification, which attracted Mapuche Indians from Argentine Republic and from neighbour Chile.

"Let us larn from Ceferino to be good children of Supreme Being and blood brothers to all," Bertone told the crowd spreading out on a grassy field.

"Viva Ceferino!" Christian church leadership shouted, raising a cheer among the crowd. Today in Americas

Church research workers have got attributed a miracle to Namuncura based on an Argentinian woman's claim that devotedness to him healed her of uterine malignant neoplastic disease in 2000. On Sunday, she told journalists there was no medical account for her recovery.

"Doctors told me, 'this is impossible.'" said Valeria Herera, 24. "But they were never able to explicate it to me scientifically speaking."

Namuncura, the boy of a Mapuche North American Indian chief, studied at a Catholic school in Buenos Aires tally by the Salesian order, began seminary preparation in Argentine Republic and went to Roma for more than surveys before dying there at 18 of tuberculosis.

Some have got criticized Namuncura's beatification, noting that his father resisted Argentinian military political campaigns blamed for eradicating indigenous peoples.

Namuncura "was handed over to be converted to Christianity," said Jorge Nahuel, a spokesman for one Mapuche group. He called the blessedness a "real discourtesy against the history of our people."

The ceremonial was authorized in July by Pope Ruth Benedict XVI, who have made attempts to beatify topics in their fatherlands instead of Rome. Blessedness is sometimes the first measure to sainthood.

The first Indian saint in the Americas, Juan Diego, was canonized by then-Pope Toilet Alice Paul two in United Mexican States City in 2002.