In a mundane world, money is one of the most coveted possession. The World Inequality Report 2018 declared that the rich becomes richer, the poor poorer.
Kate Hope of BBC said the world’s richest 1 percent get 82 percent of the wealth. Last year, Oxfam said that the eight richest individuals own as much wealth as the poorest half of world.
Saint Katherine Drexel of the 18th century was acknowledged as heiress to a great fortune of his father, an international banker. But early in life she believed that God blessed people with wealth to be shared.
She grew up in a family sharing blessings to the poor. She nursed her stepmother with cancer for three years. During her long and extreme suffering she realized that wealth cannot stop suffering, moreso death.
‘Be the missionary’
Katherine Marie was born on November 26, 1858, in Philadelphia. Her father, Francis Anthony, a Catholic, is an international banker of Austrian descent.
Katherine and her two sisters had the best education. Her mother, Hannah Langstroth, died when she was 5 weeks old. Her stepmother, Emma Bouvier, deeply inspired her to love the poor and encouraged her to pursue a religious vocation.
Twice a week, food, clothing and even assistance to pay rentals for dwellings were distributed to the poor who lined up in 1503 Walnut Street. The widows and lonely single women, too proud to join the queue, were sought out and extended help.
Sunday classes for children of the employees were held. She traveled with her father and saw the pitiful life of Indians living in squalor and despair. The 1868 federal treaty, which promised education for children, was not implemented.
In 1885 her father died leaving them a $15.5-million estate that gave the three sisters earnings of $3,000 a day.
Peter Finney Jr. in Legacy of Saint Katherine Drexel noted that $1.5 million was donated to several charities. They supported 65 schools, churches, centers in 21 states through the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She sought the friendship of Sioux Chief Red Cloud and the sisters contributed to Saint Francis Mission in South Dakota Rosebud Recreation.
The three sisters traveled in Europe and Rome. In 1887, in an audience with Pope Leo XIII, Katherine briefed the pope about the urgent needs of the Indians.
She added that joining a congregation may not be the solution for she may be deserting the people that God wants her to help.
So she humbly requested the pope “to designate a congregation that would give all its time and effort to the Indian mission.”
The pope answered, “But why not be a missionary yourself my child.”
On the same year, Katherine funded the establishment of the first school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Patroness for social integration
“Miss Drexel Enters A Catholic Convent, gives up 7 million,” the headline of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, surprised social circles in 1889 when she received her religious habit as a postulant in Saint Mary’s Convent, Pittsburg.
On February 12, 1891, she took her vow as a religious with 13 companions as members of a New Religious Order, Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.
The Mother House of the new order, Saint Elizabeth Convent decided to accept black applicants. She lived so well her vows of “poverty, chastity, obedience, as well as mother and servant of the Indian and Negro races.”
The First Mission Boarding School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was opened, followed by another for native Americans in Mississippi and for blacks in Southern Part of America.
In 1897 she requested OFM friars in Saint John Baptist to help in missions for Navajos in Arizona and New Mexico, and helped financed works with Pueblo Native Americans.
A Navajo English Catechism of Christian Doctrine for Navajo children was printed in 1910. In the article “Legacy of the Saint,” it was said that she supported 65 schools, churches, centers in 21 states through the congregation.
A Christian visionary, she worked for social justice for everyone. Benedictine Father Paschal Baumann of Belmont Abbey, North Carolina, said: “She was working for the advancement of social integration, and made that so clearly a mission of the Church not just a social policy.”
In 1930 she suffered a heart attack. For the next 25 years she was in prayerful confinement.
She died on March 3, 1955, at the age of 96.
The patron saint for racial justice and philanthropists, she was canonized on October 1, 2000, by Pope John Paul II.
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.