Katharine Drexel

Upon taking her vows in 1891, Katharine Drexel founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, dedicated to the evangelization and human advancement of Native Americans and African Americans. In a country where the abolition of slavery in 1865 had not erased deep-seated discrimination, she placed her fortune at the service of the education and dignity of these populations deprived of schools and care. Over the decades, she opened, endowed, and operated nearly sixty missions and schools across the United States, from the Native American Southwest to the Deep South. Her most significant work was the founding, in 1925, of Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, which remains the only historically African American Catholic university in the United States. At the time of her death, the congregation numbered approximately five hundred religious sisters spread across some fifty convents, having established numerous elementary and secondary schools. Her commitment, founded on an intense Eucharistic life, made her a pioneer of racial justice and education within the American Catholic Church.

The spirituality of Katharine Drexel was rooted in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which gave its name to her congregation and inspired all her work. Detachment from wealth was at the heart of her journey: heiress to an immense fortune, she chose religious poverty and directed her income, throughout her life, toward the missions and schools she supported, until the capital reverted, according to her father's testamentary provisions, to charitable works. Her charity was exercised with perseverance in a context of tenacious racial prejudices, which she faced with gentleness and firmness. During the last eighteen years of her life, a serious heart condition confined her to near-immobility; she then lived a long period of withdrawal and contemplative prayer, dedicating this time to intercession for her work. This union of missionary action and interior life, as well as her growing reputation for holiness, led the Church to open her cause for beatification.

The cause for the beatification of Katharine Drexel was introduced in 1966. Pope John Paul II beatified her on November 20, 1988, following the recognition of a first miraculous healing, that of Robert Gutherman, a young boy cured of a serious ear condition in 1974, attributed to her intercession. A second miracle, the healing of Amy Wall, a young girl suffering from deafness, having been recognized, the same Pope John Paul II canonized her on October 1, 2000, during the Great Jubilee. Katharine Drexel thus became the second person born in the United States to be proclaimed a saint, after Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Her liturgical memorial is fixed for March 3, the anniversary of her death. Her canonization, celebrated in Rome in the presence of numerous American pilgrims, including Native American and African American faithful, was perceived as a recognition of her commitment to racial justice and education.

The legacy of Saint Katharine Drexel remains alive through the Congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, which she founded, and Xavier University of Louisiana, an institution that continues to educate many African American students, particularly in the fields of health. A reference figure of American Catholicism, she is honored as a patroness of racial justice and invoked by philanthropists, due to the use she made of her fortune in the service of the most disadvantaged. Her remains were first kept at the motherhouse in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, then her relics were transferred to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, which has become a place of pilgrimage. Many parishes, schools, and missions bear her name today in the United States. Her example of an evangelical use of wealth and her fight against racial discrimination continue to inspire the Church, particularly the Black and Native American Catholic communities.