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Although many missionaries are called to serve in foreign lands, some are called to be “home missionaries,” serving in their own land. Our mission hero today was one of those.
Katharine Drexel was born on November 26, 1858 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her family was very rich, but they were very generous with their time, talent and treasure. Her mother opened her home to the poor three days each week, and her father spent at least a half-hour in prayer every evening.
As a rich heiress, Katharine had the finest education money could buy, and she traveled widely. Katharine, however, had two experiences in life that had a profound impact on her.
First, she watched her stepmother die from terminal cancer. She realized that all the money in the world could not buy happiness and security.
Second, she developed a passion for Native American Indians. She was especially touched by a book by Helen Hunt Jackson called A Century of Dishonor about the plight of American Indians. Then, on a trip to the western states in 1884, Katharine saw the great needs of these poor people.
So, on a trip to Italy in 1887, Katharine and her family had a private audience with Pope Leo XIII. When she asked the pope if he would send missionaries to help Indian missions that she had been supporting in the western United States, the pope surprised her by saying, “Why don’t you become a missionary?”
And that is exactly what Katharine did. She founded a religious order of women called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored. She knew that like Native American Indians, African-Americans were also victims of prejudice and discrimination. Though she and her sisters suffered much from the Ku Klux Klan and other people of hate, they persevered.
By 1943, Mother Katharine had founded black Catholic schools in 13 states plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. She also established 50 missions for Indians in 16 states.
The institution she is most famous for founding, however, is Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic university in the United States principally for African-Americans.
In addition to her focus on Indians and African-Americans, Katharine was a very generous woman, always willing to give money to worthy causes. One of these causes was providing money to buy land on which to build a Catholic church in Wilmington, North Carolina. Today, on the piece of land that Katharine Drexel bought, sits the Basilica Shrine of St. Mary. The parish, which has always been a beacon of hope to the poor and a welcome home to the immigrant, continues its missionary mandate on the Cape Fear Coast of North Carolina and in the mountains of Honduras. I am proud to say I was the pastor of that parish from 2006-2018.
Katharine Drexel died in 1955 and was canonized in 2000, the second saint born in the United States. St. Katharine Drexel’s feast day is March 3.
What a legacy she left for us.