St. Katharine Drexel

Feastday: March 3
Patron: of racial justice and philanthropists
Birth: November 26, 1858
Death: March 3, 1955
Beatified: November 20, 1988 by Pope John Paul II
Canonized: October 1, 2000 by Pope John Paul II

St. Katharine Drexel is the second American-born saint to be canonized by the Catholic Church. This amazing woman was an heiress to a large bequest who became a religious sister and a brilliant educator.

Katherine was born in Philadelphia on November 26, 1858, the second child of a prominent and wealthy banker, Francis Anthony Drexel and his wife, Hannah Langstroth. He mother passed away just five weeks after Katharine was born. Her father remarried to Emma Bouvier in 1860 and together they had another daughter in 1863, Louisa Drexel.

The girls received a wonderful education from private tutors and traveled throughout the United States and Europe. The Drexels were financially and spiritually well endowed. They were devout in the practice of their faith, setting an excellent example of true Christian living for their three daughters. They not only prayed but practiced what the Church calls the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Katharine grew up seeing her father pray for 30 minutes each evening. And every week, her stepmother opened their doors to house and care for the poor. The couple distributed food, clothing and provided rent assistance to those in need. The Drexels would seek out and visit women who were too afraid or too proud to approach the home in order to care for their needs in Christian charity.

Though Katharine made her social debut in 1879, she never let her family's money adversely affect the way she lived her life and faith. She was an example of a Christian with a proper understanding that the goods of this earth are given for the common good.

After watching her stepmother suffer with terminal cancer for three straight years, Katharine also learned that no amount of money could shelter them from pain or suffering. From this moment, Katharine's life took a turn. She became imbued with a passionate love for God and neighbor, and she took an avid interest in the material and spiritual well-being of black and native Americans.

In 1884, while her family was visiting the Western states, Katharine saw first-hand the troubling and poor situation of the Native Americans. She desperately wanted to help them.

Katharine spent much of her time with Father James O' Connor, a Philadelphia priest. He provided her with wonderful spiritual direction.

When her father passed away a year later, he donated part of his $15.5 million estate to a few charities and then left the remainder to be equally split amongst his three daughters.

He set up his will in a way to protect his daughters from men who were only seeking their money. If his daughters should die, the money was then to go on to his would-be grandchildren. If there were no grandchildren, the Drexel estate would be distributed to several different religious orders and charities, including the Society of Jesus, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, a Lutheran hospital and the Christian Brothers.

As one of their first acts following their father's death, Katharine and her sisters contributed money to assist the St. Francis Mission of South Dakota's Rosebud Reservation.

Katherine soon concluded that more was needed to help the Native Americans and the lacking ingredient was people.

In 1887, while touring Europe, the Drexel sisters were given a private audience with Pope Leo XIII. They were seeking missionaries to help with the Indian missions they were financing. The Pope looked to Katharine and suggested she, herself, become a missionary.

After speaking with Father O' Connor, Katharine decided she would give herself and her inheritance to God through service to both Native Americans and African Americans. She wrote, "The feast of St. Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored."

Katharine began her six-month postulancy at the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh in 1889.

On February 12, 1891, Katharine made her first vows as a religious and dedicated herself to working for the American Indians and African-Americans in the Western United States.

Taking the name Mother Katharine, she established a religious congregation called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored, whose members would work for the betterment of those they were called to serve.

From the age of 33 until her death in 1955, she dedicated her life and her fortune to this work. In 1894, Mother Katharine took part in opening the first mission boarding school called St. Catherine's Indian School, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other schools quickly followed - for Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, and for the blacks in the southern part of the United States.

In 1897, Katharine asked the friars of St. John the Baptist Province of the Order of Friars Minor to help staff a mission for the Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico, and she would help finance their work with the Pueblo Native Americans.

In 1910, Katharine also financed the printing of 500 copies of A Navaho-English Catechism of Christian Doctrine for the Use of Navaho Children.

In 1915, Katherine founded Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic University in the United States for African-Americans.

By the time of her death, she had more than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools throughout the country and she established 50 missions for Native Americans in 16 different states.

Katharine suffered a heart attack at 77-years-old and was forced to retire. She spent the remainder of her life in quiet and intense prayer. She recorded her prates and aspirations in small notebooks.

Mother Katharine died on March 3, 1955 at the age of 96. She is buried at her order's motherhouse. Neither of Katharine's sisters had any children, so after her death, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament lost the Drexel fortune that supported their ministries. However, the order continues to pursue Katharine's mission with the African-Americans and Native Americans in 21 states and in Haiti.

Katharine was remembered for her love of the Eucharist and a desire for unity of all peoples. She was courageous and took the initiative to address social inequality within minorities. She believed all should have access to a quality education and her selfless service, including the donation of her inheritance, helped many reach that goal.

St. Katharine was beatified on November 20, 1988 and canonized on October 1, 2000 by Pope John Paul II.

Relics of St. Katharine can be found at St. Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in the Day Chapel of Saint Katharine Drexel Parish in Sugar Grove, Illinois.

Katharine is the patron saint of racial justice and philanthropists. Her feast day is celebrated on March 3.

19th and 20th-century American Catholic nun and saint

Katharine Drexel (November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, educator, and founder. She was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 2000; her feast day is celebrated on March 3. She was the second person born in what is now the United States to be canonized as a saint and the first one born a U.S. citizen. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.

Early life

Katharine Mary Drexel was born as Catherine Mary Drexel in Philadelphia, the second child of investment banker Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth. Hannah died five weeks after her baby's birth. For two years, Katharine and her sister, Elizabeth, were cared for by their aunt and uncle, Ellen and Anthony Drexel. When Francis married Emma Bouvier in 1860, he brought his two daughters home. A third daughter, Louisa, was born in 1863.

The girls were educated at home by private tutors. Their father believed they should learn geography first hand; accordingly, their parents took the girls on periodic tours of the United States and Europe. Three times a week, the Drexel family distributed food, clothing, and rent assistance from their family home at 1503 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. When widows or single women were too proud to come to the Drexels for assistance, the family quietly sought them out. As Emma Drexel taught her daughters, "Kindness may be unkind if it leaves a sting behind."

As a young and wealthy woman, Drexel made her social debut in 1878. However, watching her stepmother's three-year struggle with terminal cancer taught her the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death. Her life took a profound turn. She had always been interested in the plight of Native Americans, having been appalled by what she read in Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor. When her family traveled to the Western states in 1884, Katharine Drexel saw the plight and poverty of the Native Americans. She wanted to do something specific to help. Thus began her lifelong personal and financial support of numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. After her father died in February 1885, Katharine and her sisters contributed money to help the St. Francis Mission on South Dakota's Rosebud Reservation.

Heiress

For many years she took spiritual direction from a longtime family friend, Father James O’Connor, a Philadelphia priest who later was appointed vicar apostolic of Nebraska. When Katharine wrote him of her desire to join a contemplative order, Bishop O’Connor suggested, "Wait a while longer....... Wait and pray."

Drexel and her sisters Elizabeth and Louisa were still mourning their father when they sailed to Europe in 1886. Their high-powered banker father left behind a $15.5 million estate and instructions to divide it among his three daughters after expenses and specific charitable donations. However, to prevent his daughters from falling prey to "fortune hunters," Francis Drexel crafted his will so that his daughters controlled income from his estate. Still, upon their deaths, their inheritance would flow to their children. The will stipulated that if there were no grandchildren, upon his daughters’ deaths, Drexel's estate would be distributed to several religious orders and charities—the Society of Jesus, the Christian Brothers, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, a Lutheran hospital and others. Because their father's charitable donations totaled about $1.5 million, the sisters shared the income produced by $14 million—about $1,000 a day for each woman. In current dollars, the estate would be worth about $400 million.

Drexel's father had been on the board of both St. John's Orphan Asylum for Boys and St. Joseph's Female Orphan Asylum. Louise was particularly concerned as to the future of the young men after they left the orphanage. She and Elizabeth founded the St. Francis Industrial School at Eddington, Pennsylvania, in honor of their father. Elizabeth died in 1890 from complications of childbirth.

In 1889, Louisa would marry General Edward Morrell. The Morrells "…actively promoted and advanced the welfare of African Americans throughout the country. The Morrells used their wealth to build magnificent institutions that served and aided African Americans' education and upward mobility. Gen. Morrell took charge of the Indian work, while Katharine Drexel was in her novitiate."

Religious vocation

In January 1887, the sisters were received in a private audience by Pope Leo XIII. They asked him for missionaries to staff some Native American missions that they had been financing. To their surprise, the Pope suggested that Katharine become a missionary herself. Although Drexel had already received marriage proposals, "…after consultation with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she decided to give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to American Indians and Afro-Americans." Her uncle, Anthony Drexel, tried to dissuade her from entering religious life, but she entered the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh in May 1889 to begin her six-month postulancy. Her decision rocked Philadelphia's social circles. The Philadelphia Public Ledger carried a banner headline: "Miss Drexel Enters a Catholic Convent—Gives Up Seven Million."

Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

St. Benedict the Moor School, St. Augustine (c. 1898), paid for by St. Katharine Drexel

On February 12, 1891, Drexel professed her first vows as a religious sister, dedicating herself to work among the Native American and African-Americans in the western and southwestern United States. She took the name Mother Katharine, and, joined by thirteen other women, soon established a religious congregation, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. The small community used the Drexel summer home St. Michel, in Torresdale until a convent was built. In 1892, the sisters moved into St. Elizabeth's Convent. Mother Frances Cabrini had advised Drexel about the "politics" of getting her new Order's Rule approved by the Vatican bureaucracy in Rome. A few months later, Philadelphia Archbishop Ryan blessed the cornerstone of the new motherhouse under construction in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania. In the first of many incidents that indicated Drexel's convictions for social justice were not shared by all, a stick of dynamite was discovered near the site.

Requests for help and advice reached Mother Katharine from various parts of the United States. After three and a half years of training, she and her first band of nuns opened a boarding school, St. Catherine's Indian School, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1897, Mother Drexel asked the friars of St. John the Baptist Province of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) in Cincinnati, Ohio, to staff a mission among the Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico on a 160-acre tract of land she had purchased two years earlier. Mother Katharine Drexel stretched the Cincinnati friars apostolically since most of them previously had worked in predominantly German-American parishes.

A few years later, she also helped finance the friars' work among the Pueblo Native Americans in New Mexico. In 1910, Drexel funded the printing of 500 copies of A Navajo-English Catechism of Christian Doctrine for the Use of Navajo Children, written by Fathers Anselm, Juvenal, Berard, and Leopold Osterman. About a hundred friars from St. John the Baptist Province started Our Lady of Guadalupe Province in 1985. Headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they continue to work on the Navajo reservation with the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

Drexel established 145 missions, 50 schools for African Americans, and 12 schools for Native Americans. Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Catholic college in the US, also owes its existence to Drexel and the Sisters.

Death and legacy

Mother Katharine Drexel died at the age of 97, on March 3, 1955, at her order's motherhouse in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, where she was buried until 2018.

Because her father's will had stipulated that his daughters' inheritances would go to their children upon their deaths, Mother Katharine's passing left the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament without the Drexel fortune available to support their ministries.

Nonetheless, the order continues to pursue its original apostolate, working with African-Americans and Native Americans in 21 states and Haiti.

Veneration

Her cause for beatification was introduced in 1966. Pope John Paul II formally declared Drexel "Venerable" on January 26, 1987, and beatified her on November 20, 1988, after concluding that Robert Gutherman was miraculously cured of deafness in 1974 after his family prayed for Mother Drexel's intercession. Mother Drexel was canonized on October 1, 2000, one of only a few U.S. born saints and the first natural-born U.S. citizen saint (Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was born in what would become the United States, was canonized in 1975). Canonization occurred after the Vatican determined that two-year-old Amy Wall had been miraculously healed of nerve deafness in both ears through Katharine Drexel's intercession in 1994.

The Vatican cited fourfold aspects of Drexel's legacy:

a love of the Eucharist and perspective on the unity of all peoples;
courage and initiative in addressing social inequality among minorities – one hundred years before such concern aroused public interest in the United States;
her belief in quality education for all and efforts to achieve it;
and selfless service, including the donation of her inheritance, for the victims of injustice.

St. Katharine Drexel Mission Center and Shrine

See also: List of shrines § United States

Entrance to the Drexel shrine in Bensalem, PA

The Saint Katharine Drexel Mission Center and National Shrine was located in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The Mission Center offered retreat programs, historic site tours, days of prayer, presentations about Katharine Drexel, as well as lectures and seminars related to her legacy. Furniture, photo displays, and other artifacts told the story of St. Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

St. Elizabeth's Convent

Her tomb lay under the main altar in St. Elizabeth Chapel. With also artifacts and relics she used or had. Originally known as St. Elizabeth's Convent, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Much of the art displayed in St. Elizabeth Chapel was works by or about Native American, African and Haitian artists, and musicians.

On May 3, 2016, Sister Donna Breslin, president of the order, announced that the 44-acre property in Bensalem, including the motherhouse and shrine, and 2,200 acres in Powhatan, Virginia, would be offered for sale. The shrine closed at the end of 2017 and was moved, along with St. Katharine's remains, to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia The convent chapel remains open to the public.

Namesakes

Numerous Catholic parishes, schools, and churches bear the name of St. Katharine Drexel.

Parishes

St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Maple, North Carolina
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Ione, California
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Martell, California
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Cape Coral, Florida
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Venice, Florida
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Weston, Florida
St. Katharine Drexel Mission of Trenton, Georgia
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Cascade, Idaho
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Springfield, Illinois
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Sugar Grove, Illinois
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Frederick, Maryland
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Roxbury, Massachusetts
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Ramsey, Minnesota
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Alton, New Hampshire
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Burlington, New Jersey
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Buffalo, New York
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Chester, Pennsylvania
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Lansford, Pennsylvania
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Pleasant Mount, Pennsylvania
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Sioux Falls, South Dakota
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Hempstead, Texas
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin
St. Katharine Drexel Parish of Kaukauna, Wisconsin
St Katharine Drexel Parish of New Orleans, f/k/a Holy Ghost Parish
St. Joseph's Shrine of St. Katharine Drexel, Columbia, Virginia
St Katharine Drexel Mission of Haymarket, Virginia
Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church's shrine of St. Katharine Drexel, Carencro, Louisiana

Schools

Schools St. Katharine Drexel founded include (but are not limited to):

St. Benedict the Moor School
Blessed Sacrament Catholic School, Beaumont, Texas
Sacred Heart Catholic School, Port Arthur, Texas.
St. Joseph Indian Normal School, now called Drexel Hall, on the campus of St. Joseph's College, Rensselaer, Indiana. The Indian Normal School operated for eight years, from 1888 to 1896
St. Michael Indian School, serving grades K–12 in St. Michaels, Arizona
St. Mark School, the first in New York City for African-American Catholic children
St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Macon, Georgia, in 1913 with the help of Bishop Benjamin Kiely and Father Ignatius Lissner.
Xavier University of Louisiana

Schools named in her honor include:

Katharine Drexel Elementary School of Broussard, Louisiana
St. Katharine Drexel School of St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids, Minnesota
St. Katharine Drexel School of St. Louis
St. Katharine Drexel School of Philadelphia
St. Katharine Drexel School of Sioux Falls, South Dakota
St. Katharine Drexel School of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin
St. Katharine Drexel Regional Catholic School of Holland, Pennsylvania
St. Katharine Drexel Preparatory High School New Orleans
St. Katharine Drexel School of Wichita, Kansas
St. Katharine Drexel Adult Learning Center – Catholic Charities of Tulsa, Oklahoma
St. Katharine Drexel Preparatory – Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia
St. Katharine Drexel School (previously St. Germaine School) of Pittsburgh
St. Edward School New Iberia, Louisiana

Churches and chapels

Katharine-Drexel Kapelle, Dornbirn, Austria—the birthplace of Drexel's grandfather Francis Martin Drexel
St. Katharine Drexel Chapel and Retirement Center, El Reno, Oklahoma
St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Church, New Orleans
St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Mission, Maple, North Carolina
St. Katharine Drexel Catholic Church, Martell, California
St. Katharine Drexel Summer Chapel, Harpswell, Maine
St. Katharine Drexel Chapel Drexel university campus Philadelphia, PA
St. Katharine Drexel Chapel (on the campus of Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans)

The choir loft window in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Sioux, Saint Joseph's Indian School, Chamberlain, South Dakota, was donated by the Drexel Family.