Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

Crypt for "Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People" in Saint Louis Cemetery #3, New Orleans.

Abbreviation	S.B.S. (post-nominal letters)
Formation	February 12, 1891
Founders	St Katharine Drexel
Headquarters	4 Interplex Dr, Ste 205 Trevose, PA 19053
Region served	African-American and Native American communities
Patronage	Blessed Sacrament
Parent organization	Catholic Church
Website	https://www.katharinedrexel.org/sisters-of-the-blessed-sacrament/

The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (SBS) are a Catholic order of religious sisters in the United States. They were founded in 1891 by Katharine Drexel as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People.

During her life, Saint Katharine used approximately $20 million of her personal fortune to fund SBS-staffed schools for Native Americans and African Americans; her wealth passed on to other charitable organizations following her death, due to a clause in her father's will. The sisters continue to work in schools and churches in the Black and indigenous communities of the United States.

History

Background

The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), a meeting of all Catholic bishops in the United States, renewed the vigor for missionary work among the "Colored and Indian races". Katharine Drexel and her sisters were some of the many who took up the call, using their vast wealth inherited from their father, Francis Anthony Drexel, to finance schools and missions for African- and Native-American children. (They received monthly dividends from his multifaceted investments.)

She and her sisters would eventually travel to Rome to ask Pope Pope Leo XIII for missionaries to staff the institutions they were funding, but the Pope instead asked her to become a missionary herself. She eventually obliged, shocking her family, high society, and the world.

Founding

Archbishop James O'Connor of Omaha, acting alongside Drexel, decided, with the approval of Archbishop P. J. Ryan of Philadelphia, to form a new congregation on behalf of Native Americans and African Americans. For some years previous to this step, Drexel had been very active in re-establishing and supporting schools in many of the Indian reservations.

The first sisters, including foundress Katharine Drexel, entered religious life under the tutelage of the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were also inspired by O'Connor, who served as Drexel's spiritual director until his death. In 1889, after completing a two-year novitiate to learn the foundations of religious life and upon first profession of vows, these sisters were clothed in the habit of the new congregation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament of the Indians and Colored People. Drexel was installed as their first superior.

The order was headquartered at their longtime motherhouse, St. Elizabeth's Convent in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania.

After this, they continued their period of preparation in the old Drexel homestead, in Torresdale, Philadelphia. Early in 1892 a mother-house and novitiate were opened at Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, adjoining which was erected a manual training and boarding school for African-American boys and girls. In June 1894, four sisters set out for Santa Fe, New Mexico to reopen St. Catherine Indian School.

Major works

In 1915, Drexel founded Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, initially a high school (accredited in 1921) that became a university in 1925. It remains the only Catholic HBCU and was staffed in part by the SBS sisters until 2024.

The sisters have collaborated with the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, the Commission for the Catholic Missions among the Colored People and the Indians and other Catholic institutions.

Death of Mother Katharine and canonization

Drexel died in 1955, and at the time the order had over 500 members. Because her father's will stated that his daughters' inheritance should go to their children—or else to his other chosen charitable causes—upon their deaths, the SBS sisters no longer had a stream of income after Mother Katharine's death. (The SBS sisters were not on her father's list of recipients, having been founded well after his death.)

Drexel was canonized in the year 2000. The motherhouse was then made up of the motherhouse of retired nuns and the location of Saint Katharine Drexel Mission Center and National Shrine. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

21st century

Drexel's shrine remains active and is now managed by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, who moved it to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in 2016. In 2017, due to a lack of members and money, the sisters moved out of St. Elizabeth's Convent and sold the property.

As of 2018, there were about 100 Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, more than half of whom are retired. They continue to work in schools and churches around the country, with the last faculty member from the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament working on the Xavier University of Louisiana campus passing in 2024.

Schools

Universities

• Xavier University of Louisiana

Primary and secondary schools

• St. Joseph Indian Normal School
• St. Michael Indian School

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament — One of the most recent congregations of religious women in the Catholic Church and one of entirely American origin, founded by Miss Katharine Drexel at Philadelphia, Pa., in 1889, for missionary work among the Indians and coloured people of the United States. The formal approbation of the Holy See was given to the congregation in July, 1907.

The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore gave a new impetus to missionary work among the coloured and Indian races and as one of the results of its recommendations, Right Reverend James O'Connor, Bishop of Omaha, acting in conjunction with Miss Katherine Drexel, daughter of the late Francis A. Drexel of Philadelphia, decided with the approval of the Most Reverend P. J. Ryan, Archbishop of Philadelphia, to form a new congregation of two races. For some years previous to this step, Miss Drexel had been very active in re-establishing and supporting schools in many of the Indian reservations. The survey of the field of work revealed about 250,000 Indians neglected, if not practically abandoned, and over nine million of negroes still struggling through the aftermath of slavery.

The piteous condition of these two races decided Miss Drexel to devote both her fortune and her life to them. With the approval of high church authorities in the United States, she gathered around her young women imbued with the same ideas, and thus founded, towards the close of 1899, the nucleus of the new community. In order to be well grounded in the principles of the religious life, the first members made a two years' noviiate with the Sisters of Mercy. After this, they continued their period of preparation in the old Drexel homestead, Torresdale, near Philadelphia. Early in 1892 a mother-house and novitiate were opened at Maud, Pennsylvania, adjoining which was erected a manual training and boarding school for coloured boys and girls.

The distinctive spirit of this institute is the consecration of its members, body and soul, to the service to Jesus Christ ever present in the Holy Eucharist. His Eucharistic life is to be the inspiration of the entire varied activity of the sisters. Besides the vows usual in all religious communities, the sisters pledge themselves to work exclusively for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Indian and coloured races. By their rule, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament may

• undertake all kinds of educational works;

• they may care for orphans or spiritually or corporally destitute children;

• they may attend the sick by visiting them in their homes or by conducting hospitals;'

• they may shelter destitute and deserving women;

• they may visit and instruct inmates of prisons and reformatories;

• they may establish and conduct homes for the aged;

• they may establish schools and classes outside their own houses, visit the poor in order to look after their religious welfare and also to teach them habits of good living, neatness, and thrift-in short, to make them self-sustaining men and women.

The sisterhood now numbers one hundred and twelve members. In 1894, St. Catharine's boarding and industrial school for Pueblo Indians was opened at Santa Fe, New Mexico; in 1899, the Institute of St. Francis de Sales, Rock Castle, Va., a boarding academy and industrial school, was opened for the training of Southern coloured girls; in 1902, St. Michael's Mission, Arizona, for the education of Navajo Indians, a boarding and industrial school, was completed and opened. The Academy of the Immaculate Mother, Nashville, Tenn., was opened in 1905. In this school girls are also trained to become teachers, while others not desiring to teach may tke a full course of domestic science and dressmaking. In 1906, the sisters commenced work at Carlisle, Pa., by instructing the Indian pupils of the Government School, and conducting a day school for coloured children.

External links

• Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament