In 1977, a U.S. bishops’ statement urged the United States government to develop policies to provide greater justice for Native Americans. Later that year the Catholic Bureau followed by testifying in support of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which Congress enacted in 1978. Also in 1977, the Catholic Bureau, in cooperation with the Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians, began to support the Tekakwitha Conference, which then reorganized from an association of Northern Plains Catholic missionaries into one representing Native American Catholics. Meanwhile, the Catholic Bureau began to promote the canonization cause of its namesake, Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk convert.