Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (pronounced [ˈɡaderi deɡaˈɡwita] in Mohawk), given the name Tekakwitha, baptized as Catherine and informally known as Lily of the Mohawks (1656 – April 17, 1680), is a Roman Catholic saint who was an Algonquin–Mohawk laywoman. Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, on the south side of the Mohawk River, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Roman Catholicism at age nineteen, when she was renamed Kateri, baptized in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena. Refusing to marry, she left her village and moved for the remaining 5 years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, south of Montreal in New France, now Canada. [Wikipedia]

Saint-Kateri, the first Native American Indian to ever be proposed for sainthood. St. Kateri Tekakwitha was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and canonized a saint in October 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI during the opening of the Year of Faith. Her feast day is July 14 and she is the patron saint of the environment, ecology, and orphans. [Internet]