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Saint Katherine Marie Drexel
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November 26, 1858 — March 3, 1955 “All is vanity except knowing, loving and serving God. This alone can bring peace to my soul.”
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Katherine Drexel was born in Philadelphia, the second daughter of Francis and Hannah Drexel. Her father was a wealthy banker and philanthropist who instilled in his daughters the idea that their wealth was to be shared with others. Hannah died soon after Katherine’s birth. Her father later married Emma Bovier, a devoted Catholic, who raised her stepdaughters in the faith. At an early age Katherine was drawn to prayer and the Eucharist. As a young woman she traveled to the western United States and was drawn to the plight of the Native American Indians. This was the beginning of her lifelong support of missions and missionaries in the United States. In 1887 she established the St. Catherine Indian School in New Mexico. During an audience with Pope Leo XIII in Rome, Katherine requested missionaries to staff some of the Indian missions she was financing. The Pope challenged Katherine to become a missionary. Soon after, she made the decision to devote herself totally to God and to use her wealth to aid American Indians and Afro-Americans. On February 12, 1891, she professed her vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. During her lifetime she opened, staffed and directly supported nearly 60 schools and missions in the West and Southwest and founded Xavier University in Louisiana. Religious education, social service, visiting in homes, hospitals and prisons were included in the ministries of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Katherine Marie Drexel was canonized on October 1, 2000, becoming the second native-born U.S. citizen to be declared a saint. |
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