Kateri Tekakwitha |
Only known portrait from life of Catherine Tekawitha, c. 1690, by Father Chauchetière |
Born |
1656
Ossernenon, New York |
Baptized |
April 18, 1676 |
Died |
April 17, 1680 (aged 24)
Kahnawake (near Montreal), Quebec, Canada |
Venerated in |
Catholic Church |
Beatified |
June 22, 1980, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II |
Canonized |
October 21, 2012, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI |
Major shrine |
Saint Francis Xavier Church, Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada |
Feast |
July 14
April 17 (Canada)[citation needed] |
Attributes |
Lily; Turtle; Rosary |
Patronage |
ecologists, ecology, environment, environmentalists, loss of parents, people in exile, people ridiculed for their piety, Native Americans |
Controversy |
Pressure to marry against will, shunned for her Catholic beliefs |
Kateri Tekakwitha (
pronounced [ˈɡaderi deɡaˈɡwita] in
Mohawk), given the name
Tekakwitha, baptized as
Catherine[2][3] and informally known as
Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a
Catholic saint and
virgin who was an
Algonquin–
Mohawk. Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, on the south side of the
Mohawk River in present-day New York State, she contracted
smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Catholicism at age nineteen, when she was baptized and given the Christian name Kateri in honor of
Catherine of Siena. Refusing to marry, she left her village and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the
Jesuit mission village of
Kahnawake, south of
Montreal on the St. Lawrence River in
New France, now
Canada.
Kateri Tekakwitha took a vow of perpetual
virginity. Upon her death at the age of 24, witnesses said that her scars vanished minutes later, and her face appeared radiant and beautiful. Known for her
virtue of
chastity and
mortification of the flesh, as well as being
shunned by some of her tribe for her religious conversion to
Catholicism, she is the fourth
Native American to be venerated in the Catholic Church.
[4]
She was
beatified in 1980 by
Pope John Paul II, and canonized by
Pope Benedict XVI at
Saint Peter's Basilica on 21 October 2012.
[5][6] Various miracles and supernatural events are attributed to her intercession.