St. Kateri Tekakwitha
Patron of Native Americans, ecology, environment
Saint Kateri (1656–1680), 'the Lily of the Mohawks,' was the daughter of a Mohawk warrior and a Christian Algonquin captive, orphaned by smallpox at four years old and left half-blind and scarred. Baptized at twenty by a Jesuit missionary, she suffered persecution from her own village for refusing to work on Sundays and fled to the Christian Iroquois settlement at Kahnawake on the Saint Lawrence, where she made a vow of virginity — the first known of any Native American woman. She died at twenty-four; according to two French eyewitnesses, her smallpox scars vanished from her face within minutes of her death. Benedict XVI canonized her in 2012, the first Native American saint.