MARCH 3D, FERIA OF LENT

Month in honor of the Foster Father of Our Lord and Spouse of the Blessed Virgin, Saint Joseph.

Among other Saints, today is the feast day of Saint Cunnegunda, spouse of our Saint Henry.

Also very much connected to us in this Diocese (because of Sacred Heart Catholic School), today is the feast of —

Saint Katherine Drexel, Virgin, Foundress

Born on 26 November 1858 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Catherine Marie Drexel was the daughter of an he extremely wealthy railroad entrepreneur and philanthropist Francis Anthony Drexel and his wife, Emma (Bouvier) Drexel. Catherine was taught from an early age to use her wealth for the benefit of others; her parents even opened their home to the poor several days each week. Katharine's older sister Elizabeth founded a Pennsylvania trade school for orphans; her younger sister founded a liberal arts and vocational school for poor blacks in Virginia. Katharine nursed her mother through a fatal three-year illness before setting out on her own; Mrs. Emma Drexel died in AD 1883.

Interested in the condition of Native Americans, during an audience in 1887, Katharine asked Pope Leo XIII. to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend, Bishop James O'Connor. The pope replied, "Why don't you become a missionary?" Taking this as an inspiration from Heaven, she visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux chief, Red Cloud, and began her systematic aid to Indian missions, eventually spending millions of the family fortune. She joined the novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy, but later founded a new Order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored (now known simply as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1891. She consulted with Mother Frances Cabrini on getting the Order's rule approved in Rome, which she received in 1913.

By 1942 she had established a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, 40 mission centers, 23 rural schools, 50 Indian missions, including Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, the first United States university for blacks. It is said that she visited the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Following a heart attack, she spent her last twenty years in prayer and meditation. She died on this day, March 3d, 1955 of natural causes at the mother-house of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

Mother Katherine Drexel was canonized on October 1st, 2000, at Rome, by Pope John Paul II. Her shrine at the mother-house was declared by the Bishops of the United States as a National Shrine in 2008.