Saint Katharine Drexel Shrine

The Story

St. Katharine Drexel was born in Philadelphia in 1858, the daughter of one of America's wealthiest banking families. Raised in a home where prayer and generosity to the poor went hand in hand, she grew troubled by the poverty and injustice endured by Native American and African American communities across the United States. During an audience with Pope Leo XIII in 1887, Katharine asked the pope to send missionaries to serve Native Americans. According to the well-known account, he replied by asking why she did not become a missionary herself. She entered religious life in 1889 and in 1891 founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a congregation devoted to the Eucharist and to serving Black and Native American communities. Over six decades she poured her inheritance — estimated at some twenty million dollars — into founding schools and missions across the country, including Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, the first Catholic university in the United States established for Black students. She spent her final years in prayer at the congregation's motherhouse in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, where she died in 1955. Katharine Drexel was beatified in 1988 and canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on October 1, 2000. Her tomb was long a place of pilgrimage at the Bensalem motherhouse; in 2018, after the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament sold the property, her remains were solemnly transferred to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, where pilgrims venerate her tomb today. Her life continues to speak to Catholics of Eucharistic devotion expressed in practical charity, and of the Gospel's demand for justice toward every human person.

Church Recognition

St. Katharine Drexel was beatified in 1988 and canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on October 1, 2000, one of the first American-born saints. In 2018 the Archdiocese of Philadelphia transferred her remains from the Bensalem motherhouse to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, where her tomb is open for public veneration.

Catholic Teaching

Her shrine reflects the Church's veneration of the saints and their relics (CCC 1674) and the communion of saints (CCC 946–962), while her life shows how devotion to the Eucharist bears fruit in charity and in defense of human dignity.

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Practical

1 Additional Information ▾

The shrine at the motherhouse holds her tomb.

Go Deeper

Visit the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament at https://www.katharinedrexel.org for her life story and canonization history; the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia maintains information on visiting her tomb. See also the Catechism on the communion of saints (CCC 946–962).