Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (pronounced [ˈɡaderi deɡaˈɡwita] in Mohawk), was given the name Tekakwitha and baptized as Catherine. (1656 – April 17, 1680) She is also known as Lily of the Mohawks and is a Roman Catholic saint and an Algonquin–Mohawk laywoman. She was canonized in 2012, the first Indigenous saint in North America. This window is in Saint Josephs Basilica, Edmonton.
Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon on the south side of the Mohawk River in the Quebec/New York area, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic. All of Kateri’s family died, and her face was badly scarred. She converted to Roman Catholicism at age nineteen when she was renamed Kateri and baptized, in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena.
Refusing to marry, she left her village and for the remaining five years of her life lived at the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, near Montreal when it was still part of New France.
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