Already canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, St. Katharine Drexel will be singled out Saturday for a more down-to-earth honor: induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
The Philadelphia-born nun, a leader in philanthropy and racial activism from the late 19th century until her death in 1955, will be added to the roll of nearly 250 women who have “made a significant national impact,” executive director Christine M. Moulton said.
St. Katharine was not, however, nominated by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Or by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the order she founded in 1891. Or by a hometown admirer. Or even by a Catholic.
The saint’s nomination came from a 56-year-old Jewish electrical engineer and author in Denver who is the country’s most prolific submitter of names to the Women’s Hall of Fame. Counting her four successful candidates this year, Jill Tietjen is responsible for 21 of the hall’s 247 inductees.
Founded in 1969, the hall dovetails with Tietjen’s mission to raise the profile of women who have made important contributions to American life, “almost none of whom we learn about in school,” she said.
Tietjen, who cowrote Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America, said she learned about St. Katharine on a 1995 trip to Santa Fe, N.M., where the nun was active in relief work among American Indians.
Since then, Tietjen said, “she was always on my mind.”
Tietjen added that she particularly admired Sister Katharine’s gumption in asking Pope Leo XIII to provide better educational opportunities to American Indians. He turned the question back at her and asked her what she was doing, inspiring her educational work. In addition to funding more than 60 missions and schools for Indians and African Americans, she founded the nation’s only historically black Catholic university, Xavier University in New Orleans.
Sister Patricia Suchalski, president of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, said she was surprised when the call came from the hall that St. Katharine was be to honored.
“We had absolutely nothing to do with that,” she said.
Nonetheless, she will lead a pilgrimage from the order’s shrine in Bensalem to Upstate New York for the ceremony Saturday – coincidentally, the 11th anniversary of her canonization by Pope John Paul II.
Each year, a panel of judges selects the new inductees. There are 11 for 2011. In addition to St. Katharine, Tietjen scored with nominations for the jazz singer Billie Holiday, also a Philadelphia native; Dorothy Harrison Eustis, founder of the nation’s first guide dog training school; and Donna E. Shalala, former secretary of health and human services and current president of the University of Miami.