Canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000, Drexel was the second person born in what is now the United States to be declared a saint and the first who was born a U.S. citizen.
Early life
Drexel was born Catherine Marie Drexel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 26, 1858, to Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth. She had an older sister, Elizabeth.[1] Her family owned a considerable banking fortune. Her uncle, Anthony Joseph Drexel, was the founder of Drexel University in Philadelphia.[2] Katharine's mother Hannah died five weeks after her birth, and Anthony Joseph and his wife Ellen cared for Katharine and Elizabeth for the next two years. Her father married Emma Bouvier in 1860, brought his older children home, and had a third daughter, Louise, in 1863.[1]
The girls grew up in a wealthy and religious household with charitable principles. Emma regularly distributed food and clothing at her home to people.[3]
In 1876, James O'Connor was appointed vicar apostolic of Nebraska, an area that covered Nebraska, northeastern Colorado, Wyoming, and parts of Utah, Montana, and the Dakotas. He was consecrated titular Bishop of Dibona at the chapel at Eden Hall.[5] Katharine was awakened to the plight of indigenous American people during a family trip to the Western United States and was inspired.
Religious work
In these early years, Drexel traveled extensively, both in her home country and abroad. In 1886, during an audience with Pope Leo XIII, she was urged to become a missionary and to realize her desire to assist the Indian and African American population in the country.[2][6] In 1889, Katharine Drexel fulfilled that wish by entering a convent of the Sisters of Mercy and in February 1891, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.[2] Drexel decided to establish the congregation to address the needs of Native Americans and African Americans in the southern and western United States, as well as the poor black communities. She served as first Superior General of the congregation and held that position until 1937, when illness made it necessary that she retire from active administration.[6]
An appeal by the late Archbishop James H. Blenk brought Mother Katharine to New Orleans in 1915 to open the way for the education of the black youth in the city.[6] This led to the purchase of the old Southern University site, and establishing Xavier High School, later known as Xavier Preparatory School. She financed more than 60 missions and schools around the United States, as well as founding Xavier University of Louisiana[7] – the only historically Black and Catholic university in the United States. She financed Mother Loyola, the blood sister and successor of foundress Lucy Eaton Smith of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine de' Ricci, to care for Afro-Cuban children in Havana, Cuba during and after the Spanish–American War. The children had been orphaned by the war, and no other church or government entity was willing to support them because they were children of color. In 1942, the Republic of Haiti acknowledged her with the Honneur et Merite Medal and the following year, she was recipient of the Sienna Medal for the most distinctive contribution to Catholic life in the United States.[6]
Other honors included the DeSmet Medal from Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash., 1938; the Catholic Action Medal from the Knights of Columbus, Santo Domingo Council, Philadelphia, 1938; and an award and scroll by the Catholic Committee of the South, 1942.[6]
Beatification and canonization
Katharine Drexel's tomb at Philadelphia Cathedral
Drexel was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1988, when her first miracle through prayer—healing the severe ear infection of teenage Robert Gutherman in 1974—was accepted.[8] She was canonized on October 1, 2000,[9] when her 1994 miracle of reversing congenital deafness in 2-year old Amy Wall was recognized.[10]
A love of the Eucharist and perspective on the unity of all peoples;
courage and initiative in addressing social inequality among minorities;
her efforts to achieve quality education for all;
and selfless service, including the donation of her inheritance, for the victims of injustice. (She is known as the patron saint of racial justice and of philanthropists.)[11]
The Saint Katharine Drexel Mission Center and National Shrine was formerly located at St. Elizabeth's Convent in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The Mission Center offered retreat programs, historic site tours, days of prayer, presentations about Saint Katharine Drexel, as well as lectures and seminars related to her legacy. The convent was subsequently sold and in August, 2018, Drexel's remains were transferred to a new shrine at the.Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.
St. Joseph Indian Normal School, now called Drexel Hall, on the campus of St. Joseph's College, Rensselaer, Indiana. The Indian Normal School operated from 1888 to 1896. A school for boys, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative indicates children were "taken" from reservations in order to matriculate here. See page 350 of cited source.[16]
St. Mark School, the first in New York City for African-American Catholic children
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and School, Founded 1912, Atlanta, Georgia
St. Vincent De Paul Catholic Church and School, Founded 1932, Nashville, Tennessee
St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish was founded in 1893. St. Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament opened St. Ignatius of Loyola School in 1926. The school moved to its current facility in 1967 in Philadelphia.[17]
St. Emma's Industrial and Agricultural Institute (later St. Emma Military Academy for Boys) founded on the Belmead Plantation near Powhatan, Virginia in 1897
Kate Drexel Industrial Boarding School, on the Umatilla Reservation in Pendleton, Oregon. Operated from 1847 to at least as late as 1929. See page 185 of cited source.[16]
St. John's School for Osage Indian Boys, Blackburn, Oklahoma. Operated from 1888 to 1913, reportedly at the request of the Osage Nation. See page 347 of cited source.[16]
St. Mary's Indian Industrial School, on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. Operated from 1884 to 1910. See page 359 of cited source.[16]
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.
McGuinness, Margaret (2023). Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision. New Jersey: Paulist Press.
Bresie, Amanda. Veiled Leadership: Katharine Drexel, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and Catholic Race Relations. Catholic University of America Press, 2023.
