Katharine Drexel: The Riches-to-Rags Story of an American Catholic Saint by Cheryl C. D. Hughes (review)

The title captures what is generally most remembered about St. Katharine Drexel. Born in 1858 into Philadelphia’s wealthiest family, as a young woman she walked away from it all by becoming a vowed religious and devoted her very substantial income to the evangelization and education of Native Americans and African Americans. To accomplish this she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament who continue her mission to this day. The congregation was near its peak at the time of her death in 1955, with 501 Sisters serving in twenty states and the District of Columbia.

Just forty-five years after her death she was canonized and while there are several biographies of her in print, Hughes’s work is the first to examine her personal theology in depth, if one does not count the official Positio written by Father (now Bishop) Joseph Martino as part of the canonization process, of which few copies exist. Hughes’s work is important for a better understanding of this saint whose life is a testament against America’s chief sins, bigotry and materialism.

The second child of Francis A. Drexel and Hannah Langstroth Drexel, her mother died shortly after her birth. In 1860 her father married Emma Bouvier, who greatly influenced Katharine, her older sister Elizabeth, and younger sister Louise, who was born to the second marriage. The three were raised in a pious Catholic household, especially remarkable for outreach to the poor.

In her teen years, Katharine was also influenced by Father James O’Connor, a Philadelphia priest who would become the first Bishop of Omaha but remained her spiritual director.

Emma Drexel died in 1883 and Francis in 1885, which left the three sisters as the recipients of an immense trust fund.

Although she had hinted at it previously, from the time of Emma’s illness and death Katharine began to give serious thought to entering religious life and this intensified after the death of her father. This is preserved in her personal journals and her letters to and from Bishop O’Connor, as is her developing spiritual life and devotion to the Eucharist. O’Connor in these years encouraged her spiritual development but cautioned against excesses in such matters as fasting and scrupulosity, and did express doubt that Katharine had a true vocation. Bishop O’Connor “felt that she could do more good being in the world,” Hughes writes.

It was not until 1888 that Katharine finally told Bishop O’Connor, no matter what he said, that she believed it was God’s will she enter religious life and with this he capitulated and agreed that she did indeed have a true religious vocation. He also convinced her that she should establish and fund her own congregation devoted to ministry to Native Americans and African Americans. Although he did not live to see it, her congregation, The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People came into existence in 1891, upon completion of her own religious formation with the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh.

The second half of Hughes’ book is devoted to the ‘The Kenotic and Eucharistic Spirituality of Katharine Drexel,” and tying it into the spirituality of Pope John Paul II, under whom she was canonized. As Hughes herself notes, “Kenosis, a common term today was not used in the context of nineteenth-century spirituality.” Katharine herself would have been unfamiliar with the term. In present day spiritual theology, Hughes explains, it is a term that covers a broad range of activities and attitudes “that constitute an expressed or implied emptying out of self.” “Katharine’s self-emptying kenotic spirituality perfectly balanced her Eucharistic spirituality,” Hughes writes. “It was from her spiritual core that she was able to go forth to battle with the inequities of her day, to fight for the rights of Native Americans and African Americans.” At the same time her main...