Saint Katharine Drexel
Drawn to a Religious Life: Education and Service
Katharine considered a religious vocation after the death of her stepmother Emma in 1883. A private audience with Pope Leo XIII in 1887, as well as her close friendship with Vicar of Nebraska James O’Connor and other clergy, led Katharine to choose a religious life. This decision allowed her to single-mindedly pursue her vision of bringing Catholicism and formal education to Native American and Black communities while maintaining exacting control over her fortune, balancing spirituality, financial acumen, and service in her administration of the order she founded.
Katharine’s concern over the living conditions of Native Americans began years earlier, following Vicar O’Connor's reports on the conditions under which Native American tribes were forced to live in the northwestern United States. In response to these accounts, Katharine’s father, Francis A. Drexel, funded a number of Catholic mission schools in the late 1870s. Francis and his three daughters traveled throughout the United States in the 1880s. Visiting reservations and Western towns left a lasting impression on Katharine. She felt affirmed in her growing desire to dedicate her life to founding educational institutions that would assimilate Native American and African American youth into white, Catholic culture, believing this to be a solution to systemic racism and poverty.
The death of Katharine’s stepmother, Emma Bouvier Drexel, in 1883, followed two years later by the death of their father, Francis A. Drexel, in 1885, left a profound hole in the sisters’ lives. Francis left his three daughters a huge inheritance of upwards of 17 million dollars, making headlines. With this influx in funding, cautious support from their uncle Anthony J. Drexel, and the sisters’ fierce independence, Katharine’s philanthropic vision began to take shape.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
On February 12, 1891, Katharine took religious vows and immediately established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (SBS) for Indians and Colored People, becoming “Mother M. Katharine Drexel.” Ten novices and three postulants lived temporarily in the family’s Torresdale mansion until a Motherhouse in nearby Cornwells Heights was completed.
Four Sisters set out for Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 13, 1894. Two years later, St. Catherine Indian School opened among the Pueblo people. At its peak, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament operated sixty missions, boarding, and day schools for Native American and African American people. The Sisters’ work often extended to ministering to the incarcerated, sick, and poor in and around the communities where they were assigned.
Educational institutions founded by Saint Katharine include Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA)—the only Catholic historically Black university in the United States—founded as Xavier University Preparatory School in 1915, on the original and abandoned site of Southern University. The school added a four-year college program in 1925. XULA is now known for its health sciences programs and high rates of success among their Black pre-med students applying to medical school.
Cordelia Frances Biddle wrote a contemporary biography of Katharine Drexel titled Saint Katharine: The Life of Katharine Drexel (2014).
The Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia holds Katharine’s personal papers and the papers of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Saint Katharine Drexel spent millions of dollars and decades of her life supporting Black and Native American education through funding, staffing, and administration. The dominant approach to educating Native Americans in the United States at that time was focused on the assimilation of Native Americans into white, Christian (in this case, Catholic), American culture. These efforts caused lasting harm to Native communities reeling from centuries of colonialist violence, acculturation, and forced removal from ancestral lands. Learn more about this issue at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s website.
