Description
Informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, Kateri was born around 1656 near present-day Auriesville, New York. As a young child she suffered from smallpox, which scarred her face and greatly weakened her eyes. At age nineteen, she converted to Roman Catholicism and settled at the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, south of Montreal, Canada for the remaining years of her life. Minutes after her death, at the age of 24, witnesses say her scars vanished and she appeared radiant and beautiful. She is known as the first North American Aboriginal Saint, for her virtue of chastity and for the mortification of the flesh. She was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012.
