Born in Philadelphia on November 26, 1858, Katharine Drexel was of the well known banking family. She was educated privately and early took an interest in the family philanthropies. Following the death of her stepmother in 1883 and her father in 1885 she inherited a half-share of a $14 million trust fund. She continued the work earlier undertaken by the family of founding and endowing schools and churches for African-Americans and Native Americans in the South and West.
In January 1887 Drexel had a private audience with Pope Leo XIII in which she suggested the need for nuns to staff the mission schools she had financed. Instead of recommending an order, he challenged her to devote her life as well as her fortune to the missions. In 1889 she became a novice with the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. In February 1891 she took her final vows and, with a few companions, founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, of which she was superior general. The community moved from the Drexel summer home in Torresdale, Pennsylvania, to the new St. Elizabeth╒s Convent in Cornwells Heights the next year. (The community received final papal approval in May 1913.) A vigorous program of establishing schools and missions began with St. Catherine╒s Boarding School for Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1894. A school for African-American girls was opened in Rock Castle, Virginia, in 1899. Subsequently schools and houses for the order were established in Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, Boston, Arizona, and Tennessee, and in 1915 Xavier University was founded in New Orleans.
Mother Katharine╒s work took her to visit most of the order╒s establishments, and she continued to supervise its activities closely until late in her life. Her golden jubilee in 1941 was the occasion for high praise of her work, to which she had devoted her life and $12 million. At her death in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, on March 3, 1955, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament had grown to some 500 members in 51 convents, and they had established 49 elementary schools, 12 high schools, and Xavier University.
