Kateri Tekakwitha

Born in 1656 near present-day Albany to a Mohawk father and a Christian Algonquin mother. As a young girl she survived smallpox but was left scarred and with poor eyesight — her name Tekakwitha means "She bumps into things." At age eight she refused an arranged betrothal, declaring she wished to dedicate her life to God. At eighteen she began learning the Christian faith from Jesuit missionary Father Jacques de Lamberville. Baptized at age twenty-one on Christmas Day 1677, she took the name Kateri in honor of Catherine of Siena. Rejected by her community for her conversion, she walked two hundred miles through the forest to the St. Francis Xavier Mission near Montreal to live among other Native American converts. She died on April 17, 1680; her dying words were "Jesus, I love you." Tradition holds that after her death the scars on her body began to heal, restoring the radiant appearance of her face. Canonized on October 21, 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, she is the first Indigenous woman in North America to be canonized — a bridge between the spiritual world of her people and the contemplative tradition of Christianity.