Saint Katharine Drexel

Saint Katharine Drexel was an American religious sister, the daughter of a Philadelphia banker, who gave her inherited fortune and her whole life to the evangelization and education of Native Americans and African Americans. She founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The Church commemorates her on March 3.

She was born on November 26, 1858, in Philadelphia, the second daughter of the banker Francis Drexel and Hannah Langstroth. Her mother died a few weeks after giving birth. Katharine and her two sisters were raised by their father’s second wife, Emma Bouvier. Emma took the girls with her to the poor, whom she visited and helped. The daughters were taught that wealth had only been entrusted to the family and was to be shared.

On a family trip to the West of the country, Katharine saw the destitution of the Native Americans. When, after her father’s death in 1885, she and her sisters inherited a great fortune, she began to fund missions and schools; in 1887 St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe was established thanks to her. She was also moved by the lot of African Americans, who were denied education and rights. In that same year, in Rome, she asked Pope Leo XIII for missionaries for the Native Americans. The pope suggested that she become a missionary herself.

Her spiritual director, Bishop James O’Connor of Omaha, long advised her to remain in the world, until he recognized her vocation, on condition that she devote herself to the missions among Native Americans and African Americans. She made her novitiate with the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. On February 12, 1891, she made her first vows and so began the new congregation. To the three religious vows she added a fourth: to be the mother and servant of both these peoples.

In 1892 the sisters moved into the motherhouse at Cornwells Heights, near Philadelphia. Mother Katharine opened and supported about 60 schools and missions, and as superior general she visited every house of the congregation each year. The greatest of her educational works was Xavier University in New Orleans, established in 1925, the only Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States intended primarily for African Americans. She drew strength for her work from prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. She openly opposed racial discrimination.

In 1937 a serious illness left her almost completely immobile and brought her service as superior general to an end. She spent the last eighteen years of her life in adoration and contemplation. She died on March 3, 1955, at Cornwells Heights, at the age of 96. Her tomb is in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

Pope John Paul II beatified her on November 20, 1988, and canonized her on October 1, 2000, in St. Peter’s Square, on the same day as Saint Josephine Bakhita and the Martyrs of China. Both miracles recognized in her cause concerned children from Philadelphia, a boy and a girl, who regained their hearing. The pope said in his homily that Mother Katharine gave God not only her fortune but her whole life.