Drexel, Katharine, Saint

▪ Roman Catholic nun

born November 26, 1858, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.

died March 3, 1955, Cornwells Heights; feast day [U.S.] March 3

      American founder of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters for Indians and Colored People (now Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament), a congregation of missionary nuns dedicated to the welfare of American Indians and African Americans.

      Drexel was the daughter of the American financier and philanthropist Francis Anthony Drexel, from whom she inherited a vast fortune. She continued the work earlier undertaken by the family of founding and endowing schools and churches for African Americans and Native Americans (American Indian) in the South and West. She later visited these establishments, touring by burro and stagecoach. While in Rome (January 1887), she had a private audience with Pope Leo XIII to indicate a need for nuns to staff her mission schools. The pope challenged her to devote her life as well as her fortune to the missions.

      In 1889 she became a novice with the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In February 1891 she took her final vows and, with a few companions, founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, of which she was superior general. The community moved from the Drexel summer home in Torresdale, Pennsylvania, to the new St. Elizabeth's Convent in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, the next year. (The community received final papal approval in May 1913.)

      Mother Drexel began a vast building campaign with the founding of St. Catherine's Boarding School for Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1894, followed by another school at Rock Castle, Virginia, in 1899, for African American girls. She opened more schools in Arizona and Tennessee (1903) and in 1915 founded a school for African Americans that would in 1925 become Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana. By 1927 she had established convents for her congregation at Columbus (Ohio), Chicago, Boston, and New York City. She received high commendation from Pope Pius XII on her golden jubilee in 1941.

      At the time of her death, she had used more than $12 million of her inheritance for her charitable and apostolic missions, working in conjunction with the U.S. Indian Office, through which she helped found the Society for the Preservation of the Faith Among Indian Children (or Preservation Society). By that time as well, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament had grown to some 500 members in 51 convents, and they had established 49 elementary schools, 12 high schools, and Xavier University.

      Drexel was beatified in 1988 after the Vatican confirmed her first miracle, restoring a boy's hearing. A second miracle was attributed to her in January 2000 after a young girl was cured of her deafness following prayers to Drexel and having her ears touched by some of Drexel's possessions. In March Pope John Paul II approved Drexel for sainthood, and she was canonized in October, becoming the second U.S-born saint; the first was Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, canonized in 1975.

Additional Reading

Katherine Burton, The Golden Door: The Life of Katharine Drexel (1957); Consuela Marie Duffy, Katharine Drexel (1966).

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