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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Drexel Mission Schools’ principals, pastors celebrate feast of patroness on pilgrimage

Archbishop Bernard Hebda

It’s not easy for a Pittsburgher to say anything positive about Philadelphia. I nonetheless have to admit that I recently had a very powerful experience of God’s grace in the City of Brotherly Love. It occurred during a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual pilgrimage of a group of principals and pastors from our archdiocese who traveled to Philadelphia for the feast of St. Katharine Drexel, the courageous and forward-thinking foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

In an audience with Pope Leo XIII, Kate Drexel, a devout young laywoman from Philadelphia with a heart for the poor, had asked the Holy Father to send missionaries to the United States to work with our Native American communities. The pope responded: “Why, my child, don’t you undertake that missionary work?” She eventually came to see that as her vocation and founded a religious community to serve our nation’s Native American and African American populations. As one of the primary beneficiaries of the Drexel family fortune, St. Katharine would go on to spend more than $20 million of her personal resources, then a considerable fortune, to fund schools and educational programs serving underserved and economically challenged communities.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda
Archbishop Bernard Hebda

As reflected in the name of the community she founded, she drew her considerable strength from the Eucharist. When she died in 1955, many regarded her as a saint.  In fact, she was beatified in 1988 and canonized in 2000. I was privileged to be at her canonization. In 2018, her tomb was moved from the motherhouse of her religious community to the very chapel that her family had donated inside the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

One of the fruits of the 2019 Archdiocesan Roadmap for Excellence in Catholic Education was the creation of our Drexel Mission Schools initiative. The experts we had gathered to help us articulate a plan for strengthening our Catholic schools recognized the distinct needs of Catholic elementary schools that served a high percentage of the type of students that would have been particularly near and dear to the heart of St. Katharine Drexel. We identified a need and desire to provide special programming and services for excellent schools that served a majority of children who were students of color and a majority qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Seeking a heavenly patron for that important work, we turned to St. Katharine Drexel and named the initiative for her. There are presently 10 elementary schools in our archdiocese that meet those criteria and have opted into the Drexel program.

Through the incredible generosity of local philanthropists and a partnership with Boston College, these schools have been able to facilitate wraparound social services for their students and their families, assisting them at times not only with educational support but also with access to food, housing and mental health services. It strikes me that they are striving to do precisely the work that St. Katharine Drexel and her Blessed Sacrament sisters would have embraced.

Ever since the Drexel Mission Schools initiative began, we had been looking for an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Katharine Drexel so we could ground our work in her extraordinary vision. To be there in Philadelphia on her feast, March 3, was a great grace. I felt particularly blessed to have had the opportunity to not only join our Drexel principals and pastors in learning more about her and praying at her tomb, but also to be the celebrant for the cathedral Mass in her honor. I will always be very grateful to Archbishop Nelson Perez for ceding that privilege to me this year. I will never forget being able to celebrate holy Mass using the chalice that St. Katharine and her siblings had donated to the cathedral! Given that the chalice had been donated before our patroness entered religious life, it simply bore the inscription “Kate” — what a wonderful reminder of the ordinariness and approachability of the saints.

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As if that weren’t enough, some members of our group were blessed to meet Bob Gutherman. The healing of his ear through the intercession of St. Katharine Drexel was the miracle that qualified her for beatification. Not surprisingly, my prayer for our pilgrims became “St. Katharine, help us, and the teachers, staff and volunteers who serve in our Drexel Mission Schools, to hear our brothers and sisters in need.”

My fifth grade teacher, Sister Agnita, used to remind us that “God is never outdone in generosity.” I know that the principals and pastors who traveled to Philadelphia had to make the sacrifice of being away from their students and families for the duration of the pilgrimage. As I listened to them sharing on our final morning together the graces they had received, it was clear to me our gracious God had been true to Sister Agnita’s promise: What we received was far in excess of any sacrifices that we had made. I pray that through the intercession of their heavenly patroness, our Drexel Mission Schools might continue to be a blessing for the students and families they serve. Please join me in that prayer.

Los directores y pastores de las Escuelas Misioneras de Drexel

 


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