Pope Names First Native American Saint

The Pope named seven new saints today, including the first ever Native American saint. Known as the 'Lily of the Mohawks' Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 to a pagan Iroquois father and an Algonquin Christian mother. Her parents and only brother died when she was 4 during a smallpox epidemic that left her badly scarred and with impaired eyesight. 

Photo: Christian Science Monitor

More information on Kateri Tekakwitha at Wikipedia link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateri_Tekakwitha

One of the new saints was Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino teenager who helped Jesuit priests convert natives in Guam in the 17th century but was killed by spear-wielding villagers opposed to the missionaries' efforts to baptize their children. The other new saints are: Marianne Cope, a 19th-century Franciscan nun who cared for leprosy patients in Hawaii; Jacques Berthieu, a 19th-century French Jesuit who was killed by rebels in Madagascar, where he had worked as a missionary; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian who founded a religious order in 1900 and established a Catholic printing and publishing house in his native Brescia; Carmen Salles y Barangueras, a Spanish nun who founded a religious order to educate children in 1892; and Anna Schaeffer, a 19th century German laywoman who became a model for the sick and suffering after she fell into a boiler and badly burned her legs. The wounds never healed, causing her constant pain.