Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on November 26, 1858, Katharine Drexel was the second daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth Drexel. Her father was a famous banker and philanthropist. Both parents instilled in their daughters the idea that wealth was lent to them and should therefore be shared with others.

During a family trip to the western United States, Katharine, as a young woman, noticed the abject and degrading state of the Native Americans. It was this experience that awakened a desire to do something specific to alleviate their plight. This marked the beginning of a lifelong personal and financial commitment to supporting numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. The first school she founded was St. Catherine's, in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1887) for the Indians.

Later, during an audience in Rome with Pope Leo XIII, when Katharine was asking for missionaries for some Indian missions she was funding, to her surprise the Pope suggested that she become a missionary herself. After consulting with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she made the decision to give herself and her inheritance totally to God through a commitment to service to Indians and African Americans.

Her wealth now became the poverty of spirit that was for her a reality lived constantly in a life in which there was the bare minimum for her sustenance. On February 12, 1891, she made her first religious profession, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, whose purpose was to spread the evangelical message and the Eucharistic life among the Indians and African-Americans.

A woman of intense prayer, Katharine always found in the Eucharist the source of her love for the poor and oppressed and her anxiety to combat the effects of racism. Aware that many African-Americans were far from free, still living in substandard conditions, either as sharecroppers or as insufficiently paid domestic servants; aware also that they were denied both the education and the constitutional rights that others enjoyed; moved by a deep compassion, she felt the urgency and the need to do her utmost to change the mentality and racial attitudes in the United States.

Plantations were a dead-end social institution at the time, and African Americans continued to be oppressed. This was a deep pain to Katharine's sense of justice. The need to provide black people with a quality education was becoming increasingly important to her, and she discussed this pressing need with others who shared her concern about the inequality that existed for African Americans: in the cities, they were unable to receive a good education, while in the rural South, there were even legal restrictions that prevented them from obtaining a basic education.

Establishing schools and creating good teaching staff for all, Indians and African-Americans, throughout the United States thus became a top priority for Katharine and her congregation.

During her lifetime she opened, staffed, and directly financed about 60 schools and missions, mostly in the western and southwestern United States. The pinnacle of her educational efforts was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University in Louisiana, the only institution of higher learning in the United States primarily for black Catholics. Religious education, social service, and visits to families, hospitals, and prisons were part of the ministry of Katharine and her sisters.

In a very calm and serene manner, Katharine harmonized prayer and total dependence on Divine Providence with a very marked activity. Her joyful incisiveness in tune with the Holy Spirit, overcame barriers and facilitated her progress on the paths of social justice. Through the prophetic witness of Katharine Drexel, the Church in the United States gradually became aware of the grave need for a direct apostolate in favor of the Indians and African-Americans. She never hesitated to raise her voice against injustice and took a clear public position whenever there was evidence of racial discrimination.

During the last 18 years of her life, Katharine Drexel was reduced by a serious illness to a state of almost complete immobility. During this time she gave herself entirely to a life of adoration and contemplation as she had desired from her early years. She died on March 3, 1955.

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