PHILADELPHIA, September 21, 2000 -- On October 1, 2000 at St. Peter's in Rome, Philadelphia native, Katharine Drexel, will be declared the fourth American saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Following her canonization, visitors to Philadelphia’s sacred sites will have the shrines of two saints in the Philadelphia area -- St. Katherine Drexel’s, at Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bensalem, and St. John Neumann’s at St. Peter the Apostle in Center City -- and many other historic, sacred sites.

It is no accident that William Penn's City of Brotherly Love produced two American saints -- John Neumann and Katharine Drexel, "the millionaire nun." William Penn's "great experiment" was to create a city whose guiding principle was religious tolerance. Every creed and faith was encouraged to settle here. Today, Philadelphia's many houses of worship stand side by side: Mother Bethel A.M.E., the "mother" church of African Methodist Episcopalians founded by freed slave, Richard Allen; Congregation Mikvah Israel, the second oldest Jewish Congregation in America; and Christ Church, the first Anglican church in the colonies.

"Katie" Drexel was born in 1858 when the nation stood at the brink of the cataclysmic battle between slavery and freedom. During the Civil War, her grandfather, financier Francis Martin Drexel, would provide the Union with a loan of $60,000,000. Later, her uncle, Anthony, would establish Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University). Three days a week, Katie would help her wealthy stepmother, Emma Bouvier, to give clothing, food and rent money to the indigent.

By 1885, Katie’s pleasure-filled existence had collapsed with the death of her stepmother and father, and she found herself in possession of a legacy estimated at a staggering $1,000 daily. What she chose to do with this vast inheritance was remarkable. She would give it all away.

Determined to alleviate the plight of Native Americans, in 1887 Katherine journeyed to Rome to solicit help from Pope Leo XIII in 1887. Upon her return, she took vows of poverty, chastity and devotion, and established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. Combating dangerous racial prejudice, Katharine struggled to establish desperately needed schools and orphanages for African Americans and Native Americans in the South and Southwest. Sixty-three such institutions existed when she died in 1955. She considered her crowning achievement to be Xavier University in New Orleans, founded in 1915.

Because she was an early champion of the causes of equal rights, justice and parity, Katharine Drexel was considered a holy woman during her lifetime. In 1975, after praying to Mother Katharine, Robert Gutherman was inexplicably cured of deafness, and her intercessory prayers were attributed. In 1994, young Amy Wall experienced the same miraculous intervention; the second miracle requisite to achieving sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church had been achieved.

Following is a partial list of sacred sites in the Philadelphia region:

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