Katharine Drexel /

Katharine Drexel (November 26, 1858 — March 3, 1955) was an American nun, philanthropist and educator, later canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. Katharine Mary Drexel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 26, 1858 to Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth. Her family owned a considerable banking fortune, and her uncle Anthony Joseph Drexel was the founder of Drexel University in Philadelphia. She had two natural sisters, Louise and Elizabeth. She became a nun, and took the name Sister Katharine, dedicating herself and her inheritance to the needs of oppressed Native Americans and African-Americans in the western and southwestern United States, and was a vocal advocate of racial tolerance. She established a religious order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. She also financed more than 60 missions and schools around the United States, and founded Xavier University of Louisiana - the only historically Black, Roman Catholic university in the United States to date. Drexel was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1988, and canonized on October 1, 2000, one of only a few American saints. The Vatican cited a fourfold legacy