Mar 8, 2017 2 min read

BENTLEYVILLE – A Roman Catholic bishop urged Katherine Drexel to keep her social standing as one of the richest heiresses in the United States a century ago, rather than join a convent.

He thought the Philadelphia woman should remain in high society and “become a model for her social set in terms of philanthropy,” said Cordelia Frances Biddle, while speaking Tuesday about her relative at the new Bentleyville-area parish named after St. Katherine Drexel.

The parish is hosting Biddle this week as it celebrates Lent. It held another event Wednesday at Ave Maria Church in Bentleyville, where Biddle signed copies of her book, “Saint Katherine: The Life of Katherine Drexel.”

Biddle said she became inspired to write Drexel’s story when she attended the nun’s canonization in 2000, 45 years after her death. Biddle descends from Francis Martin Drexel, who also was St. Katherine’s grandfather.

“I wanted to learn about her inner conflicts,” Biddle said Tuesday.

Drexel was born in 1858. Her father, Francis Anthony Drexel, was a financier and partner of J.P. Morgan who died in 1885, leaving fortunes to his three daughters.

She shocked her relatives and America when she entered the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh in 1889 and later vowed to use her wealth to build schools for American Indians and black Americans in an era that saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Biddle said.

“She was tireless and fearless,” said Biddle, who used St. Katherine’s diaries as research for her book.

She also was aware of the genocide against tribes and Jim Crow-era lynchings and was convinced that education was the key to helping the races.

Her respect among the Indians was remarkable. Lakota Chief Red Cloud ordered the protection of Drexel, “threatening to kill his own tribesmen if they harmed her,” Biddle said.

She inherited a share of an estate that would be valued today at $300 million, and she used the money to build more than 50 schools in the United States and Haiti, said the Rev. Edward L. Yuhas, a priest and administrator in St. Katherine Drexel Parish.

“She was tenacious in her time,” Yuhas said.

He said it was “quite an honor” for the new parish to host a visit by a living relative of St. Katherine, an author who also teaches creative writing in the honors college at Drexel University in Philadelphia.