Katharine
Drexel was born Catherine Marie Drexel on November 26, 1858, the second
daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel, a wealthy banker, and his wife,
Hannah, who died very shortly after Catherine’s birth. Francis married
again two years later, and he and his new wife, Emma, had another
daughter when Catherine was five.
The
three Drexel children were well educated and enjoyed many social and
material privileges. They were privately educated at home by their
tutors and would often tour parts of the United States and Europe with
their parents. They were brought up to the practice of the virtues and
assisted their parents every week when they opened their home to the
care and aid of the poor.
Catherine made her social debut in 1879
as a wealthy, popular young heiress. However, her life took a profound
turn when, after nursing Emma Drexel for three years during a terminal
illness, she realized that her family’s fortune could not buy freedom
from pain or death. She became a very active and staunch advocate for
the black and native Americans after witnessing their plight during a
family trip to the Western United States in 1884.
At the
prompting of Pope Leo XIII, the young heiress became a missionary
religious in 1891 and established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
to work among the American Indians and Afro-Americans. Her decision to
enter religion rocked Philadelphia social circles, one newspaper
carrying the banner headline: “Miss Drexel Enters a Catholic
Convent—Gives Up Seven Million."
Over
the course of the next sixty years, Mother Katharine Drexel, as she
became known, devoted herself and her fortune to propagating her
missionary work. By the time of her death in 1955, at the age of
ninety-six, she had established a system of Catholic schools for blacks
in thirteen states, twenty-three rural schools, and fifty missions for
Indians in sixteen states. Her most famous establishment was Xavier
University for Blacks in New Orleans in 1915 – it was the first of its
kind in the United States and faced great opposition from radical
racists.
Mother Katharine Drexel was canonized by Pope John Paul
II on October 1, 2000, the second native-born American ever to be
declared a saint after St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1774.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
St. Katharine Drexel
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment