St. Katharine Drexel

St. Katharine Drexel was an American founder of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters for Indians and Colored People (now Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament), a congregation dedicated to the welfare of American Indians and African Americans. Born in 1858, she was the daughter of financier and philanthropist Francis Anthony Drexel. After her mother's death, she and her sisters inherited a vast fortune and continued the work of founding and endowing schools and churches for African Americans and Native Americans in the South and West.

Drexel began a vast building campaign with the founding of St. Catherine's Boarding School for Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1894, followed by another school for African American girls at Rock Castle, Virginia, in 1899. She opened more schools in Arizona and Tennessee (1903) and founded a school for African Americans that would become Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1925. By 1927, she had established convents for her congregation at Columbus, Chicago, Boston, and New York City.

Drexel used over $12 million of her inheritance for charitable and apostolic missions, working in conjunction with the U.S. Indian Office, which helped found the Society for the Preservation of the Faith Among Indian Children (or Preservation Society). By the time of her death, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament had grown to around 500 members in 51 convents, and they had established 49 elementary schools, 12 high schools, and Xavier University.

Drexel was beatified in 1988 after the Vatican confirmed her first miracle, restoring a boy's hearing. A second miracle was attributed to her in January 2000, after a young girl was cured of her deafness following prayers to Drexel and having her ears touched by some of Drexel's possessions. Pope John Paul II approved Drexel for sainthood in March, and she was canonized in October 2000, becoming the second U.S.-born saint.