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The saints

St. Katharine Drexel

A Philadelphia heiress who asked the pope for missionaries, and he told her to become one.

Feast: 3 March (feast on the U.S. calendar) · 1858 to 1955 · The modern era · Philadelphia and the American West and South

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Black-and-white photograph of St. Katharine Drexel in a religious habit, writing at a desk.

Unknown author, 1915. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Katharine Drexel

A papal audience in Rome, 1887

Katharine was the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia banker and inherited a fortune.1

She saw how Native Americans and Black Americans were treated and asked Pope Leo XIII to send missionaries.1

The pope asked why she did not become one herself.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers her as founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

01St. Katharine Drexel

Twenty million dollars

She founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and gave millions to schools for Native and Black Americans, including Xavier University in New Orleans.1

Live it this week

Fund something good for someone left out

Katharine gave her fortune to schools for the excluded. This week, give real money to an educational ministry for a community that’s often overlooked.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Katharine Drexel”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.