Briefly Reviewed: January-February 2025

Veiled Leadership: Katharine Drexel, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and Race Relations

By Amanda Bresie

Publisher: Catholic University of America Press

Pages: 300

Price: $34.95

Review Author: Elizabeth Hanink

Like most, I assumed that when Katharine Drexel discerned a call to religious life, she gave away her large fortune and retired to the nunnery. I assumed her money was used by someone else to help educate the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, she maintained control of her inheritance and directed its use until she died. Along the way, she founded a religious community that continues to this day, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, originally called the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.

Katharine’s parents, although wealthy, lived a simple, pious life that put great value on professionalism and education. When her mother died shortly after Katharine’s birth, her father remarried. He and his new wife used their resources to benefit the community and for the glory of the Church. They did not, however, simply dole out money. The second Mrs. Drexel kept meticulous records and maintained a personal interest in each recipient. She encouraged the same in her daughters and reminded them, “Don’t let the poor have cold feet.” Throughout her life, Katharine would require the same attention to detail and accountability from all who received funds from her foundation.

As part of her early education, Katharine traveled extensively, including across the United States. These trips exposed her to the profound inequalities indigenous people and black Americans experienced and eventually led to the work to which she gave her life. In 1889 she entered the Sisters of Mercy and, after a short period, in 1891 took her vows as the head of a new order (largely at the behest of her bishop and to preserve control over her money). The rule of the nascent congregation stipulated that in addition to working on personal perfection, all the sisters should “by an apostolate of prayer and work, zealously endeavor to procure, through Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, living temples for His Divinity amongst the Indian and Negro races.”

It was not an easy undertaking, but, thanks to Katharine’s fortune, the entire emphasis from the very beginning was on the neediest student populations, Catholic or otherwise. Hurdles like the entrenched racism of some communities made things difficult at times but did not deter the sisters. There were, of course, problems. Though generous in spirit, the actions of the sisters at times showed what we would now call a lack of understanding of those they were trying to serve and smacked of what author Amanda Bresie frankly calls “white supremacy.” The sisters did not always appreciate that the people they helped might have their own ideas or agendas. According to Bresie, Drexel’s extensive correspondence over the years does not provide a clear sense of her ideas on race. But in practical terms, she was one of the first to apply Catholic social teaching to minority communities in the United States, and her great wealth helped these ideas gain acceptance. That the order she founded was not among the first to integrate is largely due to the difficulties the congregation faced in regions that did not accept the mixing of races. “Drexel wrote that she wanted America to come to a realization that out of every ten people in this country one is a negro,” Bresie writes, “and that everyone has an immortal soul made in the image and likeness of God which is made for Heaven and redeemed by Christ’s Passion and Death. He shares in the common dignity of a human being regardless of his nationality or race.”

Katharine’s reach was considerable. At one point, she had founded and staffed 23 rural schools and helped fund 60 more. She covered the expenditures of 51 convents, 49 elementary schools, 12 high schools, and one university, as well as assisting another hundred schools, always preserving ties to the Church. Everywhere the government wanted to Americanize indigenous peoples, she wanted to present a Catholic alternative. Help might come in the form of salaries, construction costs, land purchases, and even insurance policies. She largely financed the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions.

Katharine’s main business was always the salvation of souls. But in time, her understanding of how to help shifted to working for justice in this world, too. She possessed an innate appreciation of power, and she actively engaged with the secular world when necessary. Her eyes and ears were attuned to goings-on in Washington, D.C., and via family connections she maintained contacts throughout the government. According to Bresie, though Katharine never hesitated to disagree with ecclesiastical authorities, she always understood the need for their continuing goodwill. Because of her discretion, few knew of her lobbying and extensive petitioning, or of her financial support of organizations like the NAACP.

When a heart attack sidelined Katharine in 1935, the congregation continued its widespread educational efforts, including boarding schools, and in the next 20 years opened an additional 22 missions. But these numbers are deceptive, as anonymous giving was always a large part of Katharine’s activity. With her death in 1955, the order lost its prominence largely because, according to her father’s will, the remaining money reverted to the Drexel family estate, and the sisters lost the money that had enabled most of their work.

Although certainly much more is known about Katharine’s spiritual life, this book is primarily an academic exploration of her practical work, how she did what she did. Very little is said about the virtues she possessed, the pious practices, or the moral courage that led to her canonization. Nonetheless, Veiled Leadership contains well-researched material that is interestingly presented and gives enough information about her struggles to enable readers to see Katharine Drexel for the remarkable woman she was.

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