Among the pantheon of saints, is the American saint Mother Katharine Drexel. Katharine Mary Drexel (1858-1955) was an American heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, and foundress. The crowning glory of her life was her canonization as a Roman Catholic saint in 2000 by Pope Saint John Paul II.
Saint Katharine’s earthly life spanned through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean Conflict. Her religious vocation produced impressive achievements during a time that women played limited roles in our country’s business and affairs.
I am a product of many religious women’s dedication to the education and formation of Catholic children so I, naturally, have a special affinity for Mother Katharine Drexel. At the end of this rather long post I will share with you my personal connections that I have encountered with this saintly woman which brought her closer to me in this world.
Early Life
But let’s begin at the beginning. Katharine was the second child of investment banker, Francis Anthony Drexel, and Hannah Langstroth. She was born to a family that not only owned a considerable fortune but also to one that had a devoted tradition of philanthropy. Her uncle, Anthony Joseph Drexel, was the founder of Drexel University. Her other uncle, Joseph William Drexel, used his wealth to establish planned communities and housing for the poor and unemployed as well as other philanthropic works in the world of art and music.
Katharine Mary ‘s life began in Philadelphia on November 26, 1858. Five weeks after her birth her mother, Hannah, died. For two years Katharine and her older sister, Elizabeth, were cared for by their aunt and uncle, Ellen and Anthony Drexel.
Her father married Emma Bouvier in 1860. (An aside – Emma’s brother, John Vernon Bouvier, was the great-grandfather of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.) Both daughters were reunited with their father and stepmother to resume a pious and loving family life. A third sister, Louisa, was born in 1863.
Exceptional tutors educated the Drexel sisters at home. Famaily trips to Europe and across the United States supplemented their education. It was during these family travels that Katharine was exposed to the extreme poverty that Native Americans faced.
Emma Bouvier Drexel taught her daughters their money was meant to help others. Two afternoons a week, the Drexel family distributed food, clothing and rent assistance from their Philadelphia family home. When widows or lonely single women were too proud to come to the Drexels for help, the family sought them out, but always quietly. As Emma Drexel taught her daughters, “Kindness may be unkind if it leaves a sting behind.”
Later as a young and wealthy woman, Katharine made her social debut in 1879. However, soon afterwards she cared for and watched her beloved stepmother struggle and suffer for three years with terminal cancer. This experience taught Katharine that the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death. Her life took a profound turn.
Two years after Emma’s death, her father died in 1885. Their high-powered banker father left behind a $15.5 million estate and instructions to divide it among his three daughters, after expenses and specific charitable donations. However, to prevent his daughters from falling prey to “fortune hunters”, Francis Drexel crafted his will so that his daughters controlled income from his estate, but upon their deaths, their inheritance would flow to their children. The will stipulated that if there were no grandchildren, upon his daughters’ deaths, Drexel’s estate would be distributed to several religious orders and charities—the Society of Jesus, the Christian Brothers, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, a Lutheran hospital and others.
Their father’s immediate charitable donations totaled about $1.5 million, the sisters shared the income produced by $14 million—about $1,000 a day for each woman. In current dollars, the estate would be worth about $400 million.
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
In 1886, the three sisters, although still mourning their father, sailed to Europe. In January 1887, Pope Leo XIII received the sisters in a private audience. At that time, they asked him for missionaries to staff some of the Indian missions that they had been financing. To their surprise, the Pope suggested that Katharine become a missionary herself.
Although Katharine had already received marriage proposals, she consulted with her spiritual director about her desire to become a religious sister. After prayer and thought, Katharine decided to give herself to God, along with her inheritance, through service to others. Her uncle, Anthony Drexel, tried to discourage her from entering religious life, but she entered the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh in May 1889 to begin her six-month postulancy. Her decision rocked Philadelphia social circles. The Philadelphia Public Ledger carried a banner headline: “Miss Drexel Enters a Catholic Convent—Gives Up Seven Million”.
On February 12, 1891, Katharine professed her first vows as a religious sister, dedicating herself to work among the Native Americans and African-Americans in the western and southwestern United States. She took the name Mother Katharine. She was joined by thirteen other women and soon established a religious congregation, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Work With Native Americans
Requests for help and advice reached Mother Katharine from various parts of the United States. After three and a half years of training, she and her first band of nuns opened a boarding school, St. Katharine’s Indian School, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1897, Mother Drexel asked the friars of St. John the Baptist Province of the Order of Friars Minor in Cincinnati, Ohio, to staff a mission among the Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico on a 160-acre tract of land she had purchased two years earlier.
A few years later, she also helped finance the work of the friars among the Pueblo Native Americans in New Mexico. In 1910, Mother Katharine financed the printing of 500 copies of A Navaho-English Catechism of Christian Doctrine for the Use of Navaho Children, written by Fathers Anselm, Juvenal, Berard and Leopold Osterman.
In all, Saint Katharine Drexel established fifty missions for Native Americans in sixteen states.
Work With African Americans
Mother Drexel knew that many African-Americans were far from being free since many still lived in substandard conditions as sharecroppers or underpaid menial laborers. They were denied education and constitutional rights enjoyed by other Americans. She felt an urgent compassion to change racial attitudes in the Untied States even though the turn of the 20th century was the height of Jim Crow laws and anti-Catholic sentiment.
Mother Katharine purchased an abandoned university building to open Xavier Preparatory School in New Orleans. Despite that vandals smashed every window, Mother Katharine established her most famous foundation in 1915 – Xavier University.
With a $750,000 grant from Mother Katharine, the Sisters founded Xavier University. Xavier was designed to train teachers who could staff the Order’s burgeoning network of schools. Much of the cost of opening these schools, as well as Xavier, was covered by Mother’s personal fortune. It is estimated (there is no official figure) that she gave nearly $20 million during her lifetime to support the work of her Order.
Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, by 1942 Mother Katharine Drexel and her order had established a system of black Catholic schools in thirteen states, plus forty mission centers and twenty-three rural schools
Later Life
Mother Katharine continued her travels and work until she suffered a heart attack in 1935. She relinquished the office of Superior General of her Order in 1937. Though gradually becoming more infirm, she was able to devote her last years to Eucharistic Adoration, and so fulfilled her lifelong desire for a contemplative life. Over the course of six decades, Mother Katharine spent about $20 million of her private fortune building schools and churches, as well as paying the salaries of teachers in rural schools for African-Americans and Native Americans.
Saint Katharine took seriously her vow of poverty. She used pencils until they were nubs, wrote return correspondence on the blank side of the letters she received and opened up the flaps of envelopes for notepaper. When her shoelaces snapped, she sewed them back together rather than buy a new pair.
After surviving her heart attack, Saint Katharine refused to buy a wheelchair. Instead, she was reluctantly persuaded to allow workers to affix wheels on a wooden chair from the motherhouse’s auditorium.
Her charitable ways so impressed the U.S. Congress in the 1920s that she successfully lobbied for an amendment to the federal tax code that would allow an organization that gave at least 90% of its income to charity an exemption from income taxes. In 1923 alone, she had trust income of $217,426.98 and was forced to pay $74,390.32 in taxes, a 34% bite. The law became known as “The Philadelphia Nun Loophole.”
Mother Katharine died at the age of 96, on March 3, 1955, at her Order’s mother house, where she is buried.
Because neither of her biological sisters had children, after Mother Katharine’s death, pursuant to the their father’s will, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament no longer had the Drexel fortune available to support their ministries. Nonetheless, the order continues to pursue their original apostolate, working with African-Americans and Native Americans in 21 states and Haiti.
My Personal Connection
A couple of years ago, I attended a conference in Philadelphia and as I always do when I travel to other cities, I always visit at least one Catholic church. I go to thank God for a safe arrival and ask Him to take me home safely. The hotel staff directed me to St. John the Evangelist Church that was within walking distance from my hotel.
I entered this stately and historic church and after saying a few prayers I began to explore and admire my surroundings. All of a sudden I stumbled upon a sign informing the visitor that not only was Saint Katharine Drexel baptized in this church but she also stopped to pray in the church as she was leaving Philadelphia to begin her religious formation in Pittsburg.
My heart jumped with joy when I thought to myself that I was sharing the same space with Mother Drexel as she prepared to leave her home and embark on her life’s work that, ultimately, led her to heavenly glory. Oh, how I wanted to find which pew she knelt at so that I, too, could kneel there and thank God for her life. Although I didn’t find that pew, I know Mother Drexel knelt next to me and joined my prayers. On that afternoon, I truly experienced the communion of saints.