St. Katharine Drexel

St. Katharine Drexel was born on 26 November 1858 in Philadelphia, in the United States, into a wealthy and devout banking family, and grew up amid great privilege but also amid her family's deep habit of charity to the poor. Inheriting an immense fortune, she was moved by the plight of the neglected Black and Native American peoples of her country, and on the counsel of Pope Leo XIII, who urged her to become a missionary herself, she resolved to give both her wealth and her life to their service.

In 1891 she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, and over the following decades she poured her vast inheritance, some twenty million dollars, into establishing schools, missions, and churches for Black and Native Americans across the United States, including, in 1925, Xavier University of Louisiana, the first Catholic university for Black students in the country. She labored tirelessly against the racism of her age until a heart attack forced her into retirement and prayer. She died in Pennsylvania on 3 March 1955 and was canonized in 2000, only the second American-born saint.