When she showed up in the pages of newspapers across the country this week, she looked utterly winsome and holy. Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk Indian and Catholic convert, clutches a crucifix to her breast in many of the illustrations. She gazes skyward beneath long, lovely lashes. She is garlanded by flowers. A tiny halo encircles her glossy black hair, and we’re not surprised to read that this week Pope Benedict XVI credited Kateri with a new miracle. The pope decided that when Catholics prayed to her in 2006, she in turn lobbied God to spare the life a 6-year-old American Indian boy, Jake Finkbonner, who was being ravaged by a flesh-eating bacterial disease.
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