Katharine Drexel

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 the United States to be declared a saint and the first who was born a U.S. citizen.

Early life Catherine Marie Drexel was born on November 26, 1858, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 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 family lived on a 90-acre estate, in the Torresdale section of Philadelphia, 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 Native American 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. – 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: She was canonized on October 1, 2000, when her 1994 miracle reversing congenital deafness in 2-year-old Amy Wall was recognized.

The Vatican cites a fourfold legacy of Drexel: 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. Pope Leo XIV sees her as an example of those who, during their lives, "discovered that the poorest are not only objects of our compassion, but teachers of the Gospel. It is not a question of 'bringing' God to them, but of encountering [God] among them."

Her feast day is observed on March 3, the anniversary of her death.

Drexel was originally buried in Cornwells Heights, Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania, and 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 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 Bentleyville, Pennsylvania 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 St. Katherine Drexel Parish of Macedon, New York

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

Xavier University of Louisiana 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 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. 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 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. St. Emma Industrial and Agricultural Institute (later St. Emma Military Academy), founded on the Belmead Plantation near Powhatan, Virginia, in 1895 St. Francis de Sales School founded on the Belmead Plantation near Powhatan, Virginia, in 1899 St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Macon, Georgia, in 1913 with the help of Bishop Benjamin Kiely and Father Ignatius Lissner. 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. 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 Road, Tucson, Arizona Drexel Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana Drexel Street, Nashville, Tennessee Drexel Avenue, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin (Drexel Towne Centre, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin)

Other The St. Katharine Drexel Region of the Secular Franciscan Order Katharine Drexel library located on Knights Road in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Film based on her life The 23-minute documentary The Total Gift: A Katherine Drexel Story (2023) was produced by Joyful Films with Bill Rose and Gus DeSimone as co-producers. Sarah Carpenter portrayed the role of St. Katherine Drexel. The first screening of the film was at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The film was later distributed on the streaming platform Formed, which is a platform for Catholic biographies and related topics. The Augustine Institute, an American Catholic theology graduate school, manages the Formed platform.