Saint Katharine Drexel, SBS

Item Number: P149

Size: 11" (27.9cm)
(Katherine, Katarina, Catarina, Catalina)[1858-1955], was born into a very wealthy family in Philadelphia. She was inclined toward the religious life. While recovering from an illness in Europe, she recruited priests and nuns for the American Indian missions and met Pope Leo XIII, who told her to become a missionary. In 1889, she entered novitiate and in 1891, she was professed as the first member of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. She built schools in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, California, Oregon and New Mexico. She founded the first Catholic University for blacks. She added a fourth vow for her sisters, to do no work that would lead to the neglect or abandonment of the Indian or Black races. Her apostolate confounded her own generation. Her feast is March 3.