Saint Katharine Drexel

Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia in 1858 into one of America's wealthiest banking families. Her father Francis was a banking partner of J.P. Morgan. From childhood, Katharine and her sisters were raised in extraordinary wealth but also taught that their money belonged to God. They opened their home three times a week to give food, clothing, and money to the poor. In 1887, traveling in the American West, Katharine was horrified at the poverty of Native Americans on reservations and the lack of education and healthcare. Visiting Pope Leo XIII in Rome, she begged him to send missionaries to help. The Pope looked at her and said, 'Why don't you become a missionary yourself?' She did. At 33, she inherited an enormous fortune — roughly equivalent to hundreds of millions today. She gave it all to help African Americans and Native Americans. She founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and personally built and funded over 60 missions and schools across the rural South and Southwest, serving communities ignored by the broader culture. In 1925, she founded Xavier University of Louisiana — the only historically Black Catholic university in the United States, which has produced generations of Black doctors, lawyers, and teachers. She worked under constant threat from segregationists; the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses at her schools. She gave $20 million in her lifetime (about $500 million today). She died in 1955 at age 96. Canonized in 2000, she is only the second American-born saint.