St katherine biography

(1858-1955)

Who Was Saint Katharine Drexel?

In 1891, Saint Katharine Drexel left her life as an heiress behind when she became a nun. She subsequently founded the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and used her fortune to create new schools for Native Americans and African Americans across the United States. She died in 1955 at age 96 and was canonized as a Catholic saint in 2000.

Early Life

Drexel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 26, 1858. Her father, Francis Anthony Drexel, was a business partner of financier J.P. Morgan. Her mother, Hannah Jane (née Langstroth) Drexel, died a month after Drexel's birth; in 1860, her father was married again, to Emma Bouvier. In addition to their great wealth, her parents were known for their philanthropic endeavors.

Drexel was raised as a young heiress in Philadelphia and was educated at home. However, having traveled throughout the United States, she was aware of the difficult circumstances faced by Native Americans and African Americans across the country. Drexel — who lost her stepmother in 1883 and her father in 1885 — wanted to use her inherited wealth to help these groups.

Drexel supported several schools, including one that was located on a reservation in South Dakota. During a trip to Europe in 1887, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to recommend a religious order that could send missionaries to the institutions she was funding. He suggested that Drexel might undertake the missionary work herself.

Religious Life and Work

In 1889, Drexel entered religious life as a novice under the training of the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She took her final vows in 1891. With the help of a few other nuns, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People (later known simply as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament). The order would use Drexel's fortune to fund its work.

Drexel and 15 of her fellow sisters set up a schoo

Christian virgin martyr

For the 2015 film, see Katherine of Alexandria (film). For other uses, see Saint Catherine of Alexandria (disambiguation).

Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine, was, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiogr

Image: Saint Stephen, Martyr Roman Catholic Church, Chesapeake, Virginia | Stained glass of Saint Katharine Drexel | photo by Nheyob

Saint of the Day for March 3

(November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955)

Saint Katharine Drexel’s Story

If your father is an international banker and you ride in a private railroad car, you are not likely to be drawn into a life of voluntary poverty. But if your mother opens your home to the poor three days each week and your father spends half an hour each evening in prayer, it is not impossible that you will devote your life to the poor and give away millions of dollars. Katharine Drexel did that.

Born in Philadelphia in 1858, she had an excellent education and traveled widely. As a rich girl, Katharine also had a grand debut into society. But when she nursed her stepmother through a three-year terminal illness, she saw that all the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death, and her life took a profound turn.

Katharine had always been interested in the plight of the Indians, having been appalled by what she read in Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. While on a European tour, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend Bishop James O’Connor. The pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?” His answer shocked her into considering new possibilities.

Back home, Katharine visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began her systematic aid to Indian missions.

Katharine Drexel could easily have married. But after much discussion with Bishop O’Connor, she wrote in 1889, “The feast of Saint Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” Newspaper headlines screamed “Gives Up Seven Million!”

After three and a half years of training, Mother Drexel and her first band of nuns—Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored—opened a boarding school in Santa Fe.

American Catholic religious sister and saint (1858–1955)

Katharine Drexel, SBS (born Catherine Mary Drexel; November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American Catholicreligious 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

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. 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 girls grew up in a wealthy and religious household with charitable principles. Emma regularly distributed food and clothing at her home to people.

The family lived on a 90-acre estate in the Torresdale section of Philadelphia was 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 Ph