Kateri Tekakwitha

At the mission of Saint-François-Xavier du Sault-Saint-Louis, a community of Christian Amerindians gathered around the Jesuits, Kateri Tekakwitha gave the full measure of her fervor. She made her first communion on Christmas 1677 and organized her life around prayer, assisting the elderly and the sick, and manual labor. She distinguished herself by an ardent devotion to the Eucharist and the Passion of Christ. On March 25, 1679, the day of the Annunciation, she pronounced a private vow of perpetual virginity, a rare and noted choice in the Amerindian context of her time, which earned her the reputation of being the first Iroquois virgin. Under the influence of penitential practices shared by some of her companions, she imposed austere mortifications upon herself—fasting, vigils, and macerations—which her spiritual directors eventually had to moderate. Her health, already weakened by the aftereffects of smallpox, declined rapidly. Her two main biographers, the Jesuits Claude Chauchetière and Pierre Cholenec, direct witnesses or close to the mission, recorded from the 1690s the account of this brief existence, which possessed a spiritual intensity that left a lasting impression on the community.

The holiness of Kateri Tekakwitha lies in the radical nature of a faith embraced against the current of her environment and lived in evangelical simplicity, generosity, and an ardent love for Christ. Her short existence combined an intense life of prayer, a noted Eucharistic devotion, and a chastity consecrated by vow. According to the testimony of Father Pierre Cholenec, shortly after her death, which occurred "very gently" as she was pronouncing the names of Jesus and Mary, her face, previously disfigured by smallpox scars, appeared transfigured and beautified—a detail that tradition retained as a sign of the purity of her soul. Her grave at Sault-Saint-Louis very early became a place of pilgrimage, and several healings were attributed to her by the faithful. Her Jesuit biographers contributed to spreading her fame from the end of the 17th century, both in Canada and in France. This reputation for holiness, maintained for centuries by Catholic Indigenous communities and by the Canadian and American Church, paved the way for the introduction of her cause.

The cause of Kateri Tekakwitha culminated, after several centuries of popular devotion, in her declaration as venerable by Pope Pius XII on January 3, 1943. Pope John Paul II beatified her on June 22, 1980, in Rome; in 1983, he designated her as the second patroness of the Pontifical Mission Societies and the mission Church. The path to canonization opened when Benedict XVI recognized, by a decree promulgated on December 19, 2011, a miracle attributed to her intercession: the healing, in 2006, of young Jake Finkbonner, a child from Washington State suffering from a fulminant infection of 'flesh-eating' bacteria (necrotizing fasciitis caused by streptococcus), who was cured after his family prayed to Kateri and a relic was placed upon him. The canonization was celebrated by Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on October 21, 2012, making Kateri Tekakwitha the first Native American woman from North America to be proclaimed a saint. Her liturgical feast is set for April 17, the day of her death, in the general calendar and in Canada; in the United States, and according to certain French-speaking sources, it is celebrated on July 14.

Nicknamed the "Lily of the Mohawks," Kateri Tekakwitha has become a major figure in North American Catholic spirituality and a symbol of evangelization that respects Indigenous cultures. She is honored as the patroness of Amerindians, of ecology and the environment, of people in exile, of orphans, and of those who are mocked for their piety; John Paul II had also made her a patroness of the Church of the missions. Her cult radiates particularly at Sault-Saint-Louis–Kahnawake, in Quebec, where her tomb is located, as well as at the shrine of Auriesville and in Fonda, in the State of New York, places linked to her birth and her youth. Numerous parishes, schools, and institutions, as well as the Kateri Tekakwitha Conference which brings together Indigenous Catholics of North America, bear her name. Her figure, at the crossroads of Mohawk and Algonquin heritage and the Christian faith, is today invoked as a sign of reconciliation and dignity for the First Peoples.