Katharine Drexel | |
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![]() St. Katharine Drexel | |
Foundress | |
Born | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | November 26, 1858
Died | March 3, 1955 Bensalem, Pennsylvania, U.S. | (aged 96)
Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
Beatified | November 20, 1988 by Pope John Paul II |
Canonized | October 1, 2000 by Pope John Paul II |
Major shrine | Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Philadelphia, U.S. |
Feast | March 3 |
Patronage | Philanthropy, racial justice |
Katharine Drexel, SBS (born Catherine Mary Drexel; November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American Catholic heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, and educator. In 1891, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order 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 made a saint and the first who was born a U.S. citizen.
Katharine Mary 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.[1] Her family owned a considerable banking fortune, and her uncle Anthony Joseph Drexel was the founder of Drexel University in Philadelphia. She was a distant cousin of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on her father's side.
Langstroth died five weeks after Katharine's 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.[1]
The girls grew up in a wealthy and religious household with charitable principles. Emma would regularly distribute food and clothing at her home to people.[2]
The family lived on a 90-acre estate in Torresdale named St. Michel in honor of St. Michael the Archangel.[3] Rev. James O'Connor was pastor of St. Dominic's in nearby Holmesburg, Philadelphia and served as chaplain to the Society of the Sacred Heart at their motherhouse at Eden Hall in Torresdale where Katherine's maternal aunt was mother superior. In 1876, he 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.[4] Katherine was awakened to the plight of indigenous American people during a family trip to the Western United States.
In these early years, she traveled extensively, both in this 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.[5] 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, western and 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 of her flock.[5]
As 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.[5] This lead 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[6] – 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. In 1942, the Republic of Haiti acknowledged her with the Honneur et Merite Medal and the following year, she was recipient of the Sienna Medal for the most distinctive contribution to Catholic life in the United States.[5]
Other honors included the DeSmet Medal from Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash., 1938; the Catholic Action Medal from the Knights of Columbus, Santo Domingo Council, Philadelphia, 1938; and an award and scroll by the Catholic Committee of the South, 1942.[5]
Drexel is one of only a few American saints and the second American-born saint (Elizabeth Ann Seton was a natural-born US citizen, born in New York City in 1774 and canonized in 1975).
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.[7] She was canonized on October 1, 2000,[8] when her 1994 miracle of reversing congenital deafness in 2-year old Amy Wall was recognized.[9]
The Vatican cited a fourfold legacy of Drexel:
Her feast day is observed on March 3, the anniversary of her death. She is 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,[11] and in the Day Chapel of Saint Katharine Drexel Parish in Sugar Grove, Illinois.
Numerous Catholic parishes, schools, and churches bear the name of St. Katharine Drexel.
Schools St. Katharine Drexel founded or funded include (but are not limited to):
Schools named in her honor include:
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.
Drexel Avenue, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. (Drexel Towne Centre, Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.)