St Kateri Tekakwitha Tile

Known as the Lily of the Mohawks, St Kateri was the daughter of a Christian Algonquin woman who had been captured by Iroquois Indians and married to a pagan Mohawk chieftain. Kateri was born in upstate New York and was orphaned at an early age when her parents and siblings died of smallpox. She was left with poor eyesight and a badly disfigured face. However, she was a beautiful soul consecrated to Christ with a vow of virginity. As a Catholic, she was persecuted so terribly that she fled for her life to Canada near Montreal, where she lived a life of great holiness to her death in 1680 at the age of 24. Her feast day is July 14. She is patron saint of the environment and ecology. You could call her the ¨green¨ saint!