Katharine Drexel died in 1955. It is easy to recognize, and even identify with, such a contemporary person, even if she wears a nun's habit that has long since been updated by her order. She lived so recently that several of the sisters remember Katharine Drexel and speak of her with affection.

The Heiress

Katharine Drexel's name may be a giveaway to some that she was a member of the wealthy Philadelphia banking family. Indeed, her father was a partner of J.P. Morgan in a firm that later became the major Wall Street financial house Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Katharine's mother died just five weeks after her birth. Her Catholic father, Francis, of Austrian descent, eventually remarried, and her stepmother, Emma, had a good deal of influence on the young girl. The Drexels were a religious family, and Katharine and her two sisters, Elizabeth and Louise, were brought up learning to give to the needy. Three days a week Emma would open the doors of their townhouse at Rittenhouse Square to cheerfully hand out food, clothing, and cash to those who needed assistance.

Katharine led the life of a young woman of means. She had a governess and tutors. At fifteen she traveled to Europe with her family for the first time and took in the typical tourist sites. (She pronounced Westminster Abbey “gloomy.”) Back at home, Katharine made her social debut. But even while her days were filled with fittings and parties, she still made time for charity.

After her stepmother died in 1883, Katharine's father took his daughters to Europe again. This time the young woman visited the home of her namesake, St. Catherine of Siena, and her growing desire to enter a religious order was reinforced.

Returning to Philadelphia, Katharine talked to her priest, a longtime family friend, who urged her to wait awhile and see if the determination was still as strong in a year or two. During that interval Katharine and her father and sisters traveled to the Northwest, exposing her to a part of the country along the way that would play a prominent role in her future.

In 1885 Francis Drexel died. He had established a trust for his three daughters of $15 million, the largest estate ever recorded in Philadelphia up to that time. Fortune hunters were tripping over themselves to get to the girls' front door. Elizabeth and Louise both eventually married, but all three girls used their money to help others.

Katharine's Choice

There were plenty who needed help. The years of Katharine's life, like the lives of John Neumann and Frances Xavier Cabrini, spanned a time of monumental growth in this country. With immigrants pouring in from both coasts, there was a movement toward settling the middle of the country.

Katharine took the road less traveled in her work for charity: She elected to concentrate on Native Americans and African-Americans. These two sectors of the population received almost no attention from government or society at the time. The Native Americans had been here for centuries, and African-Americans were not considered “recent” immigrants.

The rail trip Katharine had taken with her father across America had, at least from a distance, acquainted her with the part of the country that needed her help. Katharine had also spoken with two missionaries, one from Dakota and the other from the Indian Bureau in Washington, D.C. She started small, endowing schools on Native American reservations around the nation with part of her inheritance.

On another trip to Europe with her sister, Elizabeth, she met with Pope Leo XIII. When she pleaded with him to send priests for the Native Americans, he responded, “Why not become a missionary yourself?”

So she did. In 1888 the young heiress entered the convent of the Sisters of Mary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to begin training for the sisterhood. She ultimately intended to found a new order, but first she had to become an “established” nun.

At the age of thirty-seven, Katharine took her final vows. By that time, with everyone now knowing about her eventual plans, she had found twelve women who wanted to work with her.

Her congregation was known as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, later to be just the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, or SBS. Soon even more like-minded women were joining the order.

Difficult Times

The ministry had its rough moments. Walking the streets of Harlem and other big-city neighborhoods in the 1950s, the sisters often passed by white people who called them “nigger sisters.” When the nuns would tell Katharine about the remarks, she would say, “Did you pray for them?”

Katharine Drexel was still allowed to administer her trust fund, which brought her about $300,000 a year. Besides funding her own projects, she readily donated money to the causes of others — a million dollars, for instance, went to the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. In the 1920s she contributed $750,000 toward the founding of Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic college established for African-Americans. The archbishop there had asked her to help provide a training college for African-American teachers. She had her lawyer handle the details of the purchase because she felt certain the owner wouldn't sell to her.

On her own, Katharine Drexel was responsible for building nearly 100 schools in cities and suburbs, and a dozen schools for Native Americans.

Special Acclaim

They seem remarkable even these days, but imagine how extraordinary Katharine Drexel's accomplishments were in her time. In noting all that she gave, Augustus Tolton (1854–1897), who lived at the time of Katharine Drexel and was, in those early years of her work, the first African-American priest to be acclaimed by black Catholics, wrote: “In the whole history of the Church in America we cannot find one person that has sworn to give her treasure for the sole benefit of the Colored and Indians. As I stand alone as the first Negro priest of America, so you, Mother Katharine, stand alone as the first one to make such a sacrifice for the cause of a downtrodden race.”

By the terms of Francis Drexel's will, when one of his daughters died her part of the Drexel trust would be divided between the other two. Katharine eventually inherited Elizabeth's share and, when Louise died in 1945, the entire income from the trust.

She lived to be nearly 100 years old. In poor health for the last twenty years of her life, she stayed close to her order's motherhouse and spent most of her time in a wheelchair. But she continued her commitment to civil rights, including funding the NAACP in some of its projects.

By the time of her death she had spent just about all of her inheritance. Katharine Drexel is buried at the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988, and canonized on October 1, 2000. Her feast day is March 3.

More than 3,000 Americans, including members of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and faculty, alumni, and students from Xavier University in Louisiana, attended the jubilee mass canonizing Katharine. The Xavier University Concert Choir sang at the liturgy. Also seated near the altar was a man who had regained his ability to hear in 1974 and attributed this to Mother Drexel's intercessions.