Urban Legend, Global Saint

Today's the feast of St Katharine Drexel, the River City banking heiress who shocked the high society of her day by devoting her massive inheritance to the education and evangelization of African- and Native Americans, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

On a cursory look back, the late 19th century might seem like a time when religious vocations were a bit more understood than they are today... in reality, however -- especially with the Nativist-era suspicion of convents still lingering about -- that wasn't the case.

As one paper memorably led its story on her decision, "Miss Drexel will now be known as 'dead to the world.'" Today, the $20 million trust she employed to fund her community's efforts would measure in excess of $200 million.

Dying at 96 on this date in 1955, Mother Katharine was beatified in 1988 and canonized in 2000 -- both, of course, by John Paul II.

Bio notes:

When the family took a trip to the Western part of the United States, Katharine, as a young woman, saw the plight and destitution of the native Indian-Americans. This experience aroused her desire to do something specific to help alleviate their condition. This was the beginning of her lifelong personal and financial support of numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. The first school she established was St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1887).

Later, when visiting Pope Leo XIII in Rome, and asking him for missionaries to staff some of the Indian missions that she as a lay person was financing, she was surprised to hear the Pope suggest that she become a missionary herself. After consultation with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she made the decision to give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to American Indians and Afro-Americans.

Her wealth was now transformed into a poverty of spirit that became a daily constant in a life supported only by the bare necessities. On February 12, 1891, she professed her first vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament whose dedication would be to share the message of the Gospel and the life of the Eucharist among American Indians and Afro-Americans.

Always a woman of intense prayer, Katharine found in the Eucharist the source of her love for the poor and oppressed and of her concern to reach out to combat the effects of racism. Knowing that many Afro-Americans were far from free, still living in substandard conditions as sharecroppers or underpaid menials, denied education and constitutional rights enjoyed by others, she felt a compassionate urgency to help change racial attitudes in the United States.

The plantation at that time was an entrenched social institution in which the people continued to be victims of oppression. This was a deep affront to Katharine's sense of justice. The need for quality education loomed before her, and she discussed this need with some who shared her concern about the inequality of education for Afro-Americans in the cities. Restrictions of the law also prevented them in the rural South from obtaining a basic education.

Founding and staffing schools for both Native Americans and Afro-Americans throughout the country became a priority for Katharine and her congregation. During her lifetime, she opened, staffed and directly supported nearly 60 schools and missions, especially in the West and Southwest United States. Her crowning educational focus was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. Religious education, social service, visiting in homes, in hospitals and in prisons were also included in the ministries of Katharine and the Sisters.

In her quiet way, Katharine combined prayerful and total dependence on Divine Providence with determined activism. Her joyous incisiveness, attuned to the Holy Spirit, penetrated obstacles and facilitated her advances for social justice. Through the prophetic witness of Katharine Drexel's initiative, the Church in the United States was enabled to become aware of the grave domestic need for an apostolate among Native Americans and Afro-Americans. She did not hesitate to speak out against injustice, taking a public stance when racial discrimination was in evidence....

Katharine left a four-fold dynamic legacy to her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who continue her apostolate today, and indeed to all peoples:

• her love for the Eucharist, her spirit of prayer, and her Eucharistic perspective on the unity of all peoples;
• her undaunted spirit of courageous initiative in addressing social iniquities among minorities — one hundred years before such concern aroused public interest in the United States;
• her belief in the importance of quality education for all, and her efforts to achieve it;
• her total giving of self, of her inheritance and all material goods in selfless service of the victims of injustice.

And from the canonization homily:

In the second reading of today's liturgy, the Apostle James rebukes the rich who trust in their wealth and treat the poor unjustly. Mother Katharine Drexel was born into wealth in Philadelphia in the United States. But from her parents she learned that her family's possessions were not for them alone but were meant to be shared with the less fortunate. As a young woman, she was deeply distressed by the poverty and hopeless conditions endured by many Native Americans and Afro-Americans. She began to devote her fortune to missionary and educational work among the poorest members of society. Later, she understood that more was needed. With great courage and confidence in God's grace, she chose to give not just her fortune but her whole life totally to the Lord.

To her religious community, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, she taught a spirituality based on prayerful union with the Eucharistic Lord and zealous service of the poor and the victims of racial discrimination. Her apostolate helped to bring about a growing awareness of the need to combat all forms of racism through education and social services. Katharine Drexel is an excellent example of that practical charity and generous solidarity with the less fortunate which has long been the distinguishing mark of American Catholics.

May her example help young people in particular to appreciate that no greater treasure can be found in this world than in following Christ with an undivided heart and in using generously the gifts we have received for the service of others and for the building of a more just and fraternal world.

On a historic note, St Kate is one of the few, if any, living persons for whom a parish was named in her lifetime.

Well, sort of.

As she lived to 97, successive archbishops of Philadelphia wanted to give a sign of approbation to her repute for sanctity... but, clearly, couldn't open her cause as she lived. And so, both local parishes dedicated to St Catherine of Siena are actually entrusted to St "Katharine" -- the misspelling intentional in wink-nod honor of the mother-foundress.

A hometown church named for Drexel herself was finally founded in 1993.

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On another local note, today likewise sees fourteen years since the Lord called His Beloved John Cardinal Krol home to the 12th Floor of Paradise... where, local revelation holds, the Pharaohs reign forever.

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