A blind Mohawk woman who forsook her village and an arranged marriage and went to live in a Jesuit convent in what is now Canada is set to become America's first native saint, according to a report by The Times published in The Australian.In three months' time Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as "Lily of the Mohawks", will be canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in a moment of pride for 680,000 Native American Catholics.
It is also hoped that the recognition of the "Blessed Kateri", who is said to work miracles of healing, may heal historical scars.
"It authenticates who they are as a people," said Father Mark Steed, who runs the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine. He told the Catholic News Service: "I think that follows through with the plight of the [Native Americans] not being accepted, reservations and all of that business ... that goes back hundreds of years."
The last Catholics from the Mohawk Valley to be canonised as saints were three French Jesuits who travelled there in the 17th century and were tortured to death by the Mohawks they were seeking to convert, according to the Church.
The Europeans had taken smallpox to the valley - an epidemic killed Kateri's father and mother in 1660 and left their four-year-old child's face scarred and her eyesight damaged.
She was given the name Tekakwitha - "She who bumps into things".