St. Kateri Tekakwitha
Born: 1656
Died: April 17, 1680
Feast day: July 14
Patron saint of: ecology, the environment, people who have lost their parents, Indigenous people
Kateri Tekakwitha blazed her own trail as the first Native American to be canonized. A woman of Algonquin and Iroquois ancestry, Kateri grew up in the midst of brutal colonization in present-day New York. Her parents died of smallpox when she was just 4 years old. Her uncle, a Mohawk chief who hated the Jesuit missionaries for infiltrating their land, adopted Kateri. A Jesuit priest baptized Kateri around age 20, a move that left her scorned by her Mohawk community. Kateri took another step outside of native tradition when she refused to get married. Kateri offers a striking example of what biographer Nelly Walworth calls a “thoroughly modern quest for personal autonomy.”
More about Kateri Tekakwitha:
6 holy women to pray with this Lent
This Lent, reflect on the lives and legacies of six female saints.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
