St. Kateri Tekakwitha - 1st Native American Saint, Patron Saint of Traditional ecology, Indigenous People and Care for creation

0:15 Hi, everyone, Welcome to Catholic One to one Today is part of our Saints series. Today we're going to talk about Saint Kateri Takawa. She was the first Native American to be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Her mom was an algonquin who was captured by a Mohawk tribe. When she got older, she took a Mohawk chief as her husband, Katiri. She was born in April sixteen fifty six and what is today Upper State, New York. When she was four, her entire family died from smallpox. Well, Kateri, she did live, and she was really badly scarred, especially her face. For the rest of her life she usually was seen wearing a blanket tied those scars. She was raised by an uncle who was a Mohawk chief. Him and his wife adopted her. She was a very hard worker and very skilled and everything she did from cooking to making clothes to weaving mats. Her adopted parents. They raised for her to marry, but she vowed never to marry. Then, when she was eighteen years old, she met a Jesuit priest and as they talked and she read the Bible and learned more about Jesus. When she was nineteen, she was baptized and converted to Catholicism. Now that was totally against the Mohawk family and tried. They didn't want that at all, But she was very, very devout. She prayed for her people convert and she spread the gift that Christianity had given her. Well, it started to get a little dicesed, so with her safety and her life in danger, she moved to a missionary established by the Jesuits, and it was for Native Americans who had converted over It was up around Montreal, Canada at that time. Now when she got there, her strength and faith in Christ even grew deeper, and she continued to spread the word. But in sixteen eighty, when she was only twenty four years old, her health really began to fail. When she only had

1:47 a few hours to left. Although people who lived in that village and the priests from the village from where the mission was, they gathered around her. She was given her last rites and she said, Jesus, Mary, I love you. Then she died. So as everyone looked on her, her face changed. The smallpox cards disappeared, and her face raided in beauty and over the next couple weeks she appeared three times to different people that say goodbye and say that she was on our way going to heaven. She became an unofficial saint for the people up around Montreal, Canada. Now after three hundred years. Pope John Paul the second he beautified her in nineteen eighty. Pope Benedict the sixteenth he canonized her in twenty twelve. She has her feast day on July fourteenth, and she is the patron saint of traditional ecology, indigenous people and care for creation. Well, thank you all for listening. You all have a great day and God bless you.