Background
Katharine Mary Drexel was born on November 26, 1858, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel, a banker and a partner of J. P. Morgan, and Hannah J. Langstroth Drexel, who died shortly after her birth. Two years later, her father married Emma M. Bouvier. The family traveled frequently; their visits to ancestral homes in Austria and Germany and to the important cultural centers of the world consolidated the girls' liberal education. The Drexel sisters early became concerned with the problems of post-Civil War America, particularly the plight of the Indian in the Southwest and the condition of the emancipated black in both North and S. Grant's peace policy for the Indian and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation were discussed at the family dinner table and in the parish church, and the Drexel family contributed substantially to missionary appeals for the establishment of schools and chapels for Indians and blacks. Over the years, the family gave some $1, 500, 000 for the building of schools and churches from Massachusetts to Texas and from Virginia to California. Emma Bouvier Drexel died in 1883 and Francis Anthony Drexel died two years later, leaving his daughters a trust fund of $14, 000, 000.
Education
Katharine was educated privately.
Career
Katharine Drexel used part of her wealth to fund mission schools in the West; she eventually visited a number of them, traveling under primitive conditions. In 1887, during a private audience with Pope Leo XIII, Drexel represented the need for nuns to staff these schools; the pope then invited her to give her life, as well as her money, to helping American Indians and blacks.
Drexel decided to found a religious congregation to carry forth her project. In 1889 she began a two-year novitiate with the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. On July 16, 1890, Pope Leo XIII sent his apostolic blessing to her and to the companions who were to form the nucleus of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Drexel made her vows on February 12, 1891, and, by the direction of Archbishop Patrick John Ryan of Philadelphia, became founder and first superior general of the new order, which from the following year had its mother house at Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania. The congregation received formal papal approval from Pope Pius X in 1913. Drexel immediately set to work establishing schools and colleges for black and Indian girls, including a boarding school for Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Xavier University, for blacks, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She also established schools in Virginia, Tennessee, and Arizona, and established houses for her order in Chicago, Boston, New York City, and Columbus, Ohio.
For more than four decades she herself directed the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in every detail. Cardinal Cushing of Boston concurred in his remarks, and Drexel also received the high commendation of Pope Pius XII. Reaching her mid-seventies, Drexel began to hand over her administrative chores to others, but she continued to counsel and pray for her congregation. Drexel died at the order's mother house in her ninety-seventh year.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"If she had never done anything else than set an example to a frivolous, self-seeking world, she should be regarded as a benefactress of the human race. She gave her immense fortune to her work. She did still more by giving herself to it, and she has done this for fifty years. " - Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia
