Saint Katharine Drexel Prayer Cards

With these prayer cards we ask for Saint Katharine to intercede for us. Katharine Mary Drexel was born in Philadelphia in 1858. Her father was a rich banker, and she and her sister were brought up in comfort and privilege. But after her stepmother died she realized that all the wealth and luxury in the world was, in the end, worthless. ‘What does it profit a man,’ said Our Lord. ‘if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?’ She felt called by God to help the plight of the Native Americans, who had been reduced to misery by the advance of civilization. In 1887 Catharine and her sister, Elizabeth, journeyed to Rome and asked Pope Leo XIII to send missionaries to help them. The pope suggested that she become a missionary herself. She became a religious sister and founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. By the time of her death in 1955, she and her sisters had founded 145 missions and 50 schools to minister to Native Americans and African Americans in the United States. Katharine had a great love of the Holy Eucharist. She spoke about minority rights and equal education for all races long before it became fashionable to do so.