![St. Katherine Drexel, the multi-millionaire American banking family heiress turned voluntarily poor nun, foundress of the HBCU Xavier University in Louisiana for which she became a target of the Klu Klux Klan (c. 1900) [1024 x 768]](https://dailyshare.site/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/0qkl6cmyx5mc1.jpeg)
Born in 1858 to the Drexel banking family, which played a significant role in the rise of global finance after the American Civil War. She grew up in a pious Catholic household; her mother would open their home 3 days a week to the poor and her father spent half an hour each evening in prayer.
After witnessing the plight of indigenous Americans during a trip to the West, Drexel met Pope Leo XIII and asked the Successor of St. Peter to send missionaries to serve indigenous Americans. The Pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?”
In 1889, Drexel gave away her $7 million inheritance (**$240 million in today’s value**) and became a contemplative nun. She met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began offering corporal works of mercy to Indian missions. Mother Drexel and her first band of nuns founded the religious order **Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.** They nourished their life of charity from the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Catholic sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, the perpetual presence of Christ’s sacrificial love. Those in religious life make absolute vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, to dedicate their earthly lives completely to answer Christ’s call to love.
The Sisters expanded their mission to serving Black Americans. By 1942, they built a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, and 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. Her crowning achievement was founding Xavier University in Louisiana, the first Catholic university for Black Americans. **Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania.**
At 77, Mother Drexel suffered a heart attack and was forced to retire. But her life had yet to begin. Now came almost 20 years of quiet, contemplative prayer from a small room overlooking the eucharistic sanctuary. Small notebooks and slips of paper record her various prayers and reflections. She passed into Paradise at 96 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
*“Ours is the spirit of the Eucharist, the total gift of self.”*
