Includes bibliographical references (pages 262-272) and index.

1.Simply Katie: Katharine Drexel's Family Life -- Family Background -- Academic and Religious Education -- Girlhood -- Early Travels -- Coming of Age -- The Deaths of Her Parents -- 2."Make Haste Slowly": The Discernment of a Vocation -- Keeping Spiritual Accounts and Early Religious Impulses -- The Beginning of Discernment -- Crisis in Discernment -- Vocation Acknowledged -- Founding a New Order -- 3.Growth of the Order -- St. Catherine's, Santa Fe, New Mexico -- St. Francis de Sales, Powhatan, Virginia -- St. Michaels, St. Michael's, Arizona -- Immaculate Mother, Nashville, Tennessee -- Xavier University, New Orleans, Louisiana -- Social Justice/Social Action in the 1930s -- The Retirement of Mother Katharine -- By the Numbers: Peak and Decline -- 4.The Kenotic and Eucharistic Spirituality of Katharine Drexel -- Kenotic Spirituality -- Eucharistic Spirituality -- 5.The Pope, the Times, and the Saint: "Be Not Afraid!" -- Signs of the Times -- Pope John Paul II Comes into Dialogue with Katharine Drexel -- Mission and Hope -- 6.A Coda: The Mystery Revealed.

On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Katharine Drexel (1858-1955) to be a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Only the second American-born Catholic saint in history, Drexel founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891 and established more than sixty Blessed Sacrament missions and schools. In this biography Cheryl Hughes chronicles the remarkable life of St. Katharine Drexel, exploring what drove her to turn away from her family's wealth and become a missionary nun who served some of the most underprivileged and marginalized people of her time. Through her inspiration and effort "Mother" Katharine improved the lives of untold numbers of Native Americans and African Americans, overcoming open hostility to her work from various quarters, including the Ku Klux Klan. Her saintly legacy lives on today.

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