Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha, "the Lily of the Mohawks", was the first native North American to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

She was born in 1656, in Ossernenon, a Mohawk village which was located near present-day Auriesville, New York. Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Algonquin clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Iroquois nations. Although she did not dare to have Kateri and her brother baptized, the mother did teach her little girl to pray.

When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and her little brother in a smallpox epidemic. She was left disfigured and half blind from the disease. After the sickness, the tribe abandoned the village and settled across the Mohawk River at Caughnawaga, near present-day Fonda, New York.

Kateri was adopted by an uncle who succeeded her father as chief. Despite her frail health, she was a good worker and her adoptive parents hoped to find her a suitable husband who would support them in their old age. However, Kateri showed no interest in marriage.

When the Blackrobes, Jesuit priests established a mission in the village, Kateri converted to Christianity. She was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676, and given the Christian name Catherine.

Kateri's family and community treated her as a slave after this. They threw rocks at her as she walked to chapel. On Sundays and holy days she spent almost the entire day there. Because she refused to work on the Sabbath, in accordance with Christian tradition, she was given no food. She was always in danger.

The following year, she stole away one night and walked 200 miles to a Christian Indian village, near Montreal, Quebec. That year, at Christmas, she received her First Communion.

For the next three years Kateri grew in holiness. She gave herself totally to God, spending long hours of prayer, performing severe penance, caring for the sick and elderly. At the age of 23, she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman whose future depended on being married.

She would not allow herself even simple comforts. She would mix ashes into her food; she once slept on a bed covered in thorns. At one point she branded herself with hot coals offering her sufferings to God.

In the winter of 1679, Kateri's always precarious health began to worsen. For months she was confined to bed as her strength dwindled. On April 17, 1680, she received Communion for the last time, whispered to those at her bedside that she would remember them in heaven, professed her love for Jesus and Mary, and slipped away.

It was reported that shortly after her death, all the smallpox scars on Kateri's face disappeared completely and were replaced by a radiant beauty. Two people said they had visions of her after she had died. A few gravely ill persons claimed to have been cured after by touching the cross she held on her deathbed.

The process for her canonization began in 1884. She was declared Venerable by Pope Pius XII in 1943. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, in front of hundreds of Native Americans who had travelled to Rome for the event. She was the first Native American to be declared Blessed by the Roman Catholic Church.

In order for her to be canonized and declared a saint, another miracle attributed to Kateri must first be proven.

Attempting to explain her chosen lifestyle, Kateri is reported to have said: "I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus. He must be my only love. The state of helpless poverty that may befall me if I do not marry does not frighten me. All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing. With the work of my hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I'll give to my relatives and to the poor. If I should become sick and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross. He will have mercy on me and help me, I am sure."