St. Kateri Tekakwitha

St. Kateri Tekakwitha (born 1656, probably Ossernenon, New Netherland [now Auriesville, New York, U.S.]—died April 17, 1680, Caughnawaga, Quebec [now in Canada]; canonized October 21, 2012; feast day in the U.S., July 14; feast day in Canada, April 17) was the first North American Indian canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Tekakwitha was the child of a Mohawk father and a Christianized Algonquin mother. At age four she was the only member of her family to survive smallpox, which affected her own health. Staying with her anti-Christian uncle, she was deeply impressed at age 11 by the lives and words of three visiting Jesuits, likely the first white Christians she had ever encountered. She began to lead a life inspired by the example of those men, and at age 20 she was instructed in religion and baptized Catherine (rendered Kateri in Mohawk speech) by Jacques de Lamberville, Jesuit missionary to the Iroquois Indians.

Harassed, stoned, and threatened with torture in her home village, she fled 200 miles (320 km) to the Christian Indian mission of St. Francis Xavier at Sault Saint-Louis, near Montreal. There she came to be known as the “Lily of the Mohawks” in recognition of her kindness, prayer, faith, and heroic suffering. Accounts of Tekakwitha’s life written by de Lamberville and fellow missionaries contributed significantly to the documentation necessary for her beatification, the process for which began in 1932 and was proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in 1980. In December 2011, after evaluating the testimony of a young boy who claimed that his infection with flesh-eating bacteria disappeared after he prayed for her intercession, Pope Benedict XVI recognized Tekakwitha as a saint. She was canonized the following October.