Saint Katharine Drexel

Description

Katharine Drexel (born Catherine Mary Drexel; November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, and educator. 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.

Daughter of banker Francis Anthony Drexel and his wife Hannah Langstroth, she was expected to enter high society as an adult. Becoming known as a philanthropist, she met with the pope in 1887 to request missionaries for work with Native Americans and African Americans, and he suggested she become a nun herself. She did so, shocking the nation and soon after founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, serving as its first mother superior.

In 1925, she founded what became Xavier University of Louisiana, the first and only Catholic HBCU. She also founded dozens of other primary schools around the country, and many parishes as well (especially when separate Black churches became a requirement under Jim Crow). The SBS sisters typically worked at the institutions as well.

Later in life, she became bedridden with illness, but continued to fund and staff missions. Upon her death in 1955, her inheritance was rerouted to other charities (as stipulated in her father’s will, since she had no children), but the SBS sisters continued her work. She was canonized in 2000; her feast day is celebrated on March 3. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011.