Saint Katharine Drexel

Katharine Drexel, SBS (born Catherine Mary Drexel; November 26, 1858 – March 3, 1955) was an American Catholic religious 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. 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, 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 Philadelphia, and served as chaplain to the Society of the Sacred Heart at their motherhouse at Eden Hall in Torresdale, where Katharine's maternal aunt was mother superior. In 1876, James O'Connor was appointed vicar apostolic of Nebraska, an area that covered Nebraska, northeastern Colorado, Wyoming, and parts of Utah, Montana, and the Dakotas. He was consecrated titular Bishop of Dibona at the chapel at Eden Hall. Katharine was awakened to the plight of indigenous American people during a family trip to the Western United States and was inspired.