St. Katharine Drexel
Feast 03-03 · Canonized 2000
Patron of
About
Katharine Drexel was born in 1858 in Philadelphia into a wealthy banking family. After her parents died, she and her sisters inherited a vast fortune, and Katharine felt called to give it away in service of Native Americans and African Americans, whose poverty and neglect she had seen firsthand on family travels.
In 1891 she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious order devoted to serving these communities. Over the following decades she spent her inheritance building schools, including Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic university in the United States for Black students.
She died in 1955 at the age of ninety-six and was canonized in 2000. She is a patron of Native Americans, African Americans, and racial justice.
Suggested prayer
O God, who moved St. Katharine Drexel to spend her great inheritance on schools for Native and Black Americans, grant through her intercession generous hearts that see your image in every person and work for racial justice. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.