In October 2012, hundreds of Mohawks and other Catholic Native Americans from the U.S. and Canada were present at the Vatican in Rome as Kateri Tekakwitha was elevated to the status of a saint through her canonization by Pope Benedict XVI. In that moment, she became the first Native American ever to be named a Saint of the Church. 

St. Kateri was a young Mohawk woman who fully embraced the Catholic faith after her conversion at age 19 during the time that Jesuit missionaries served her community. She took a vow of chastity, an act that was very unpopular with her adoptive parents and those in her tribe. 

Her name, Kateri, is the Iroquois form of Catherine, her baptismal name. It means “pure.” Tekakwitha means “putting things in order.” How fitting! Her name truly represents her holy life. 

She was often sickly, beginning with her contraction of smallpox at the age of four. Her entire family perished from the disease, and she was raised by her uncle, the chief of a Mohawk clan. She was often ill, a condition which was compounded by her self-mortifications and frequent fasting. She died at the age of 24 in 1680. 

St. Kateri is the patroness of ecology, the environment, people in exile, and Native Americans. She is affectionately known as Lily of the Mohawks. She is often depicted holding lilies or with some turtles, as her father was part of the Mohawk Turtle Clan. 

St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks, pray for us!