40 Facts About Kateri Tekakwitha

Kateri Tekakwitha took a vow of perpetual virginity, left her village, and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, just south of Montreal.

Kateri Tekakwitha was beatified in 1980 by Pope John Paul II and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter's Basilica on 21 October 2012.

Kateri Tekakwitha was the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Kahenta, an Algonquin woman, who had been captured in a raid, then adopted and assimilated into the tribe.

When Kateri Tekakwitha was around four years old, her baby brother and both her parents died of smallpox.

Kateri Tekakwitha survived but was left with facial scars and impaired eyesight.

Kateri Tekakwitha was adopted by her father's sister and her husband, a chief of the Turtle Clan.

The Jesuits' account of Kateri Tekakwitha said that she was a modest girl who avoided social gatherings and covered her head because of the scars.

Kateri Tekakwitha became skilled at traditional women's arts like making clothing, weaving mats, and preparing food.

Kateri Tekakwitha grew up in a period of upheaval, as the Mohawk interacted with French and Dutch colonists, who were competing in the lucrative fur trade.

In 1667, when Kateri Tekakwitha was 11 years old, she met the Jesuit missionaries Jacques Fremin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron, who had come to the village.

Kateri Tekakwitha's uncle opposed any contact with them because he did not want her to convert to Christianity.

Kateri Tekakwitha fled the cabin and hid in a nearby field and continued to resist marriage.

Lamberville stated that Kateri Tekakwitha did everything she could to stay holy in a secular society, which often caused minor conflicts with her longhouse residents.

Kateri Tekakwitha was said to have put thorns on her sleeping mat and lain on them while praying for her relatives' conversion and forgiveness.

Kateri Tekakwitha lived at Kahnawake the remaining two years of her life.

Kateri Tekakwitha learned more about Christianity under her mentor Anastasia, who taught her about the practice of repenting for one's sins.

The Church considers that in 1679, with her decision on the Feast of the Annunciation, Kateri Tekakwitha's conversion was truly completed, and with regard to biographies of the early Jesuits, she is regarded as the "first Iroquois virgin".

Kateri Tekakwitha would have known other people in the longhouse who had migrated from their former village of Gandaouague.

Chauchetiere was the first to write a biography of Kateri Tekakwitha's life, followed by Cholenec, in 1695 and 1696, respectively.

Kateri Tekakwitha wanted them to adopt these rather than use Mohawk ritual practices.

Kateri Tekakwitha later wrote about having been very impressed by her, as he had not expected a native to be so pious.

Chauchetiere came to believe that Catherine Kateri Tekakwitha was a saint.

Around Holy Week of 1680, friends noted that Kateri Tekakwitha's health was failing.

Kateri Tekakwitha purportedly appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death; her mentor Anastasia Tegonhatsiongo, her friend Marie-Therese Tegaiaguenta, and Chauchetiere.

The first account of Kateri Tekakwitha was not published until 1715.

Religious images of Kateri Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories alluding to her Native American birth.

Colloquial terms for Kateri Tekakwitha are The Lily of the Mohawks, the Mohawk Maiden, the Pure and Tender Lily, the Flower among True Men, the Lily of Purity and The New Star of the New World.

For some time after her death, Kateri Tekakwitha was considered an honorary yet unofficial patroness of Montreal, Canada, and the Americas' Indigenous peoples.

The process for Kateri Tekakwitha's canonization was initiated by United States Catholics at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1885, followed by Canadian Catholics.

Kateri Tekakwitha was beatified as Catherine Tekakwitha on June 22,1980, by Pope John Paul II.

Kateri Tekakwitha is the first Native American woman of North America to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

Kateri Tekakwitha is featured in four national shrines in the United States: the National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, New York; the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York; the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC; and The National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods, an open-air sanctuary in Indian River, Michigan.

The National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha is home to Caughnawaga, an excavated Haudenosaunee village.

The historian Allan Greer takes this account to mean that Kateri Tekakwitha was known in 18th-century New France, and she was already perceived to have healing abilities.

Such incidents were evidence that Kateri Tekakwitha was possibly a saint.

Sister Kateri Mitchell visited the boy's bedside and placed a relic of Tekakwitha, a bone fragment, against his body and prayed together with his parents.

The nurse's cousin told Holmes how her mother kept pictures of Kateri wrapped in fur and gave her a Tekakwitha medal.

St Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, located in adjacent Schenectady, was founded in 2012.

In May 2021, a church that was built in St Kateri Tekakwitha's honour burned for the second time on the Bay Mills Indian Community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Since 1939, the Kateri Tekakwitha Conference meets annually to support Catholic missions among Native Americans.