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Tomorrow, July 14, is the Feast Day of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. Along with St. Francis, she is a patron of the environment. She is the first Native American to be beatified by the Catholic Church. Her cause for canonization is still underway.
Kateri was a Mohawk-Algonquian. Her mother was a converted Catholic who died when Kateri was a little girl. Raised by her uncle who discouraged her interest in Catholicism, Kateri nevertheless pursued conversion, and at 20, was baptized by Jesuit missionaries.
This caused her to be chastised by her own kin. She developed and maintained a great zeal for her faith despite threats against her life. She ran away to a more accepting community where she continued her devotion and service to the needy, taking a vow of chastity and practicing physical mortification as a means of attaining holiness. She died at the young age of 24.
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Pope John Paul II beautified her in 1980. In addition to her environmental patronage, she is held as an intercessor for Native American causes and for those with facial disfigurations (as smallpox left Kateri with scars–it is said that at her death, these scars disappeared, revealing her beautiful face; many have claimed that their own facial blemishes were miraculously removed when they called upon her in prayer).
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