SAINT Kateri Tekakwitha was united with the suffering of Christ from an early age.
She was born to a Mohawk father and a Christianised Algonquin mother in 1656 in North America.
She contracted smallpox when she was four years old.
The outbreak killed her family.
Her skin was scarred from the disease, which was a source of humiliation in her youth.
Orphaned, she was raised by her uncle, who was a Mohawk chief and deeply anti-Christian.
As she grew up, she proved herself to be a valuable member of her community – a skilled worker and a patient friend.
But she refused to marry.
Each time a suitor was proposed, she turned him down.
This made her family frustrated, who punished her with extra chores but she remained diligent in her work ethic.
Eventually they relented and stopped pushing her to marry.
At some point she encountered three visiting Jesuits, who were likely the first European Christians she had encountered.
They impressed her with their faith and their example.
Aged 20, she converted to Catholicism.
She was baptised by Jesuit Father Jacques de Lamberville as Catherine, or Kateri in her language, and took her name from St Catherine of Siena.
Kateri took a vow of chastity and only wanted to become a bride of Christ.
Her choice to become Catholic stirred controversy among her neighbours, who spread rumours that she was a sorcerer.
She was harassed, stoned and threatened with torture in her home village.
She escaped and walked 320km to join a Christian community south of Montreal.
Kateri was known for her devotion to Jesus.
She was sickly and she practiced harsh self-mortification to draw closer to Jesus’ suffering on the Cross.
It did not help her health and she died aged only 24.
Legends say when she died, her smallpox scars miraculously vanished in minutes and her face appeared radiant and beautiful.
Pope Benedict XVI canonised her on October 21, 2012.
She is the patroness of Native Americans, ecology and the environment.
