BLESSED KATERI TEKAKWITHA MEDAL

About Blessed Kateri . . . Known as the "Lily of the Mohawks. "Kateri's mother was a Christian Algonquin who had been captured by the Iroquois and saved from a captive's fate by the father of Tekakwitha, whom she married. She lost her parents and brother to smallpox when she was four years old. The disease also marked Kateri's face and seriously impaired her eyesight. She was adopted by her aunts and an uncle who had become chief of the Turtle clan. In 1667 Jesuit missionaries accompanying the Mohawk deputies who had been to Quebec to conclude peace with the French, spent three days in the lodge of Kateri's uncle. From them she received her first knowledge of Christianity. Some time later the Turtle clan moved to the north bank of the Mohawk River. Here in the midst of scenes of carnage, and debauchery Kateri lived a life of remarkable virtue. At the age of 23 she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman, whose future depended on being married. Kateri went to the new Christian colony of Indians in Canada. Here she lived a life dedicated to prayer, penitential practices, and care for the sick and aged. Devotion to Kateri is responsible for establishing Native American ministries in Catholic Churches all over the United States and Canada. Kateri was declared venerable by the Catholic Church in 1943 and she was beatified in 1980.