Katharine Drexel, SBS (born Catherine Mary Drexel; November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American Catholic religious sister, and educator. In 1891, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious congregation serving Black and Indigenous Americans. 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. Her family owned a considerable banking fortune. Her uncle, Anthony Joseph Drexel, was the founder of Drexel University in Philadelphia. 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. The girls grew up in a wealthy and religious household with charitable principles. Emma regularly distributed food and clothing at her home to people. The family lived on a 90-acre estate in the Torresdale section of Philadelphia was named St. Michel in honor of Saint Michael, the archangel. James O'Connor was pastor of St. Dominic's in the nearby Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, and served as chaplain to the Society of the Sacred Heart at their motherhouse at Eden Hall in Torresdale, where Katharine's maternal aunt was mother superior. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 – 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.

Awards and accolades

She had received the following awards and accolades:

Beatification and canonization

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. She was canonized on October 1, 2000, when her 1994 miracle of reversing congenital deafness in 2-year old Amy Wall was recognized. The Vatican cited a fourfold legacy of Drexel: Her feast day is observed on March 3, the anniversary of her death. She was buried in Cornwells Heights, Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. 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. A second-class relic of Drexel can be found inside the altar of the Mary chapel 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. Numerous Catholic parishes, schools, and churches are dedicated to St. Katharine Drexel.

Parishes

Schools

Schools St. Katharine Drexel founded or funded include (but are not limited to): Schools named in her honor include:

Churches and chapels

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.

Streets

Drexel Avenue, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. (Drexel Towne Centre, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.)

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