Sainthood Campaign for Founder of Xavier Clears Major Hurdle
NEW ORLEANS — Katharine Drexel, a millionaire heiress who renounced Philadelphia society to become a Catholic nun working among impoverished Blacks and American Indians and who later used her fortune to found Xavier University, has cleared the last major hurdle in the process the Catholic church employs to identify saints.
A team of medical examiners could find no natural explanation for the restoration of hearing in an unidentified Pennsylvania child earlier found to be completely deaf, and whose family said they prayed to Drexel to intercede with God on their child's behalf. If formally accepted, the healing would constitute the required second miracle the church regards as divine confirmation that a candidate is worthy of worldwide emulation.
Born in 1858, Katharine Drexel was one of three daughters of Francis A. Drexel, a wealthy international banker who guaranteed his daughters a lifetime income generated by a $14 million trust. But not long after making her debut into Philadelphia society, "Katie" Drexel entered a convent and assumed the disciplines of religious life.
Having taken a vow of poverty, Drexel gave all her income away, much of it to finance relief among Native Americans and Blacks, two disadvantaged groups to whom she devoted her career and dedicated her order of nuns. At her death in 1955 her donations amounted to about $20 million, according to her order.
In 1915, Drexel quietly purchased property in a mostly White neighborhood in New Orleans and opened a high school for Black children. The high school later became a teacher training institution and, in 1925, evolved into Xavier University.
If canonized, Drexel would become the fourth American saint, joining Mother Elizabeth Seton, an educator, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, an educator and social worker, and St. John Neumann, a 19th century bishop of Philadelphia.