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Just a few hours ago in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II canonized Mother Katharine Drexel.
St. Katharine, an heiress from one of the most powerful financial families in the history of our nation, devoted her life to the service of African and Native Americans.
This is our first opportunity to celebrate a mass in honor of the life and work of St. Katharine and to ask her intercession in a special way for our African and Native American Apostolates in the Diocese of Wilmington.
We also ask for the same intercession of Saint Josephine Bakhita, an African born in the Sudan in 1869, who was also canonized today.
In contrast to the wealth of Katharine's family, Mother Bakhita experienced the humiliations and sufferings of slavery and kidnapping before she ever became a religious sister. These terrible traumas she was able to mysteriously transform into blessings which gave a rich spirit of compassion for the sufferings and crosses of others.
The diversity and contrast of a woman saint born into incredible wealth and a woman saint born into slavery is the Church's way of reminding us that each one of us is called to be a saint. St. Francis de Sales, the Patron Saint of our Diocese, once wrote that what sung music is to sheet music, the lives of the saints are to the gospel. Through their personalities, historical circumstances and unique response to the call of Jesus Christ in their lives, the saints inspire us in turn to pursue heroic virtue and sanctity.
Our current Holy Father believes that the lives of the saints are compelling pedagogical tools for teaching and receiving the spirit of gospel Catholicism. This explains why he is responsible for the most canonizations and beatifications in a single pontificate.
What can each of us here today learn from the life of St. Katharine Drexel? St. Katharine was an entrepreneurial and dynamic woman saint of the Catholic Church who established a religious order and founded Xavier University in New Orleans. She raised consciousness in Catholic circles and beyond about the historical injustices suffered by Native and African Americans and the need to address them with Christ's charity and sensitivity.
St. Katharine also has something to teach wealthy Roman Catholics who have received abundant material blessings.
Cardinal Dougherty expressed the lessons in this way: "Katharine did not give up nets and other fishing apparatus as the first apostles; She did not leave poverty and drudgery; She turned her back on wealth, social prominence, enjoyment of all that money can buy in order, even in her early youth, with its bright prospects, to dedicate her life to the outcast and the downtrodden."1
Katharine's parents Francis and Emma Drexel raised their three daughters with every advantage. They went on grand European tours. They went to many formal debutante balls. At the same time, Francis and Emma modeled a clear philosophy of the purpose and place of money.
Three afternoons a week, the doors of the Drexel's splendid Philadelphia home opened to anyone in need. As they grew older, the daughters helped their parents distribute huge sums each year in clothing, medicine and rent money.2
Our diocesan archivist Donn Devine informs me that the Drexel family were substantial benefactors of the original Holy Cross Church in Dover.3 Mother Katharine herself enabled the Josephites to purchase a 200 acre property near Clayton that became St. Joseph's Trade School for Boys.4
Seven days a week, the young women witnessed their parents' living example. The object of devotion was god, not money.
When Francis Drexel, the powerful one-time partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, came home each night, he spent a half hour in mental prayer.5
It was the example of the spirit of prayer and lived charity of her parents which gave Katharine the foundation to one day make her heroic sacrifices on behalf of the African and Native American peoples.
St. Katharine and her parents Francis and Emma Drexel model for wealthy Roman Catholics in our Diocese of Wilmington how to keep the faith first in their lives and how to be generous stewards of god's material gifts.
St. Katharine Drexel also teaches us the connection between a deeply eucharistic spirituality and the pursuit of social justice. It was the great social justice pope of the late 19th century Leo XIII who challenged her to translate her concerns for African and Native Americans into a religious and missionary vocation.
Seventy years before Americans heard of civil rights or Native American movements, St. Katharine saw so clearly that authentic Eucharistic devotion would help us grow in awareness of the dignity of each person.
It is the Mass that launches the Roman Catholic Christian into society to sanctify the temporal structures of the world and to defend the rights of all people at all stages of life.
The racism St. Katharine fought and the opposition she endured with such refinement and style disarmed her enemies and won their respect.6 St. Katharine taught us that promoting racial harmony is not just an exercise in rhetoric but an exercise of lived experience and effort informed by a contemplative spirit.
I had the privilege of bringing communion to one of St. Katharine's pupils, Pearl Jones, who died a year ago in her nineties and was buried from St. Joseph's on French Street.
It had been Pearl's wish to live to see the day of St. Katharine's canonization. Though that was not to be in God's providence for Pearl, I do rejoice with Pearl and remember her at this Mass knowing that she is close to St. Katharine today.
Invoking St. Katharine Drexel's intercession and following Pope John Paul II's example, we remember that this Jubilee Year is an excellent opportunity for each one of us in every race to examine our hearts and to uproot any form of hate, any hint of racism (overt or covert) or any rash judgment.
We can be sorry for any form of racism on the part of Catholics that has occurred in our Diocese of Wilmington or in any individual parish.
We can also support Bishop Michael Saltarelli's emphasis on a stronger and more vibrant spirit of Catholic evangelization of both African and Native Americans in our Diocese of Wilmington.
St. Katharine Drexel, pray for us. St. Josephine Bakhita, pray for us.
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