On February 18, 2006, five-year-old Jacob 'Jake' Finkbonner of Ferndale, Washington — a member of the Lummi Nation — was playing basketball in his elementary-school gym when he fell and cut his lip on the base of a fold-up bleacher. Within hours the cut was infected; within twenty-four hours he was in critical condition at Seattle Children's Hospital with necrotizing fasciitis — Group A Streptococcus eating through the tissues of his face at a rate of an inch per hour.
Doctors operated repeatedly to cut away the dying flesh, fighting to keep the infection from reaching his brain. They told the family there was no expectation he would survive. The pastor of the Finkbonner parish suggested that the family pray for the intercession of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha — the Mohawk-Algonquin girl who in 1680 had died of smallpox at twenty-four, whose face had been disfigured by disease, and who had been the only Native American to be beatified.
On the morning of March 1, 2006, Sr. Kateri Mitchell of the Sisters of Saint Anne — a custodian of one of Kateri Tekakwitha's bone relics — was contacted. She drove from Great Falls, Montana, to Seattle and placed the relic on Jake Finkbonner's pillow. The family prayed through the night. The next morning, the medical team reported that the infection had stopped advancing — for the first time in fourteen days. Within weeks Jake was discharged. Reconstructive surgery rebuilt his face.
The Vatican Medical Consulta — a board of largely non-Catholic specialists — examined the case at length and concluded unanimously that the cessation of the bacterial advance could not be explained by medicine. Pope Benedict XVI accepted the cure as the miracle required for canonization. On October 21, 2012, in St. Peter's Square, Kateri Tekakwitha was canonized — the first Native American saint. Jake Finkbonner, then eleven, was present at the canonization Mass.