St. Katharine Drexel

Born into one of the wealthiest families in America, Katharine Drexel inherited a fortune estimated at $20 million in 1885 — roughly half a billion dollars today. During an audience with Pope Leo XIII, she asked him to send missionaries to serve Native Americans and African Americans. The pope looked at her and replied, "Why not become a missionary yourself?"

She took the challenge literally. In 1891 she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, dedicating her fortune and her religious community to education and social justice for the two most marginalized groups in the United States. Over her lifetime she personally funded and established more than sixty schools across the country, including Xavier University of Louisiana — the only historically Black Catholic university in the nation.

Katharine spent her entire inheritance — every dollar — on this mission, living in the same austerity as her sisters. After a severe heart attack in 1935 she spent her last twenty years in quiet prayer, dying at ninety-six. Canonized in 2000, she remains a challenge to American Catholics: a witness that wealth is a vocation to give, not to keep.