Saint Who?
Saints Who Abandoned Riches
Saint Katharine Drexel
Foundress († 1955)Feast: March 3
Katharine’s father was a millionaire. Her mother died soon after her birth, and her father remarried two years later. Katharine was always very close to her stepmother. Her parents were devout Catholics who gave to the poor through both financial donations and personal acts of service. Katharine’s beloved father died when she was twenty-seven years old, making her a millionaire heiress.
She had always enjoyed travel, and she had noticed great spiritual and material poverty in the western United States during her trips. When her grieving family decided to go to Rome after her father’s death, they were granted an audience with the pope. Katharine begged Pope Leo XIII to send more missionaries to America, but the pope surprised her with a challenge to do something about it herself.
Katharine accepted that challenge and dedicated her life and her fortune to missionary work. After completing a novitiate in another order, she founded her own order, now known as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, to serve native Americans and African Americans through schools and orphanages. Katharine did not technically renounce her fortune, but she did unselfishly pour all twelve million dollars of it into the needs of the poor, demonstrating her wisdom as an administrator, her compassionate leadership of her sisters, and her great love of the Eucharist.
Lord Jesus Christ, give us joy as we renounce those things we do not really need, that we might serve the needy.
