Through My Lens: Tekakwitha Window of Notre-Dame Basilica

For Palm Sunday, I’m posting a photo of the window in Notre-Dame Basilica that celebrates Tekakwitha.

Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in what we now call upstate New York. At four years of age, her entire family died of smallpox. She also caught the disease, but survived.

(An aside that is particular pertinent these days: it is estimated that about 90 percent of the Indigenous population of North America — some 20 million people — died of the viral infectious diseases of smallpox, flu, and measles.)

Tekakwitha converted to Christianity when she was 19 and lived among the Jesuit missionaries at Kahnawake near Montreal. She had always been sickly, however, and she died at age 24.

After her death, the smallpox scars on Tekakwitha’s face were said to have disappeared. She was canonized in 2012 and is the first North American Indigenous saint.