Today’s Feast Day of St. Katharine Drexel reminds us of the blessed and productive working relationship our community enjoyed with Mother Drexel.

The cooperative relationship of these two congregations goes back well over 100 years. Katharine Drexel had contact with the Holy Ghost Fathers from the time of her early novitiate formation in Pittsburgh. In Philadelphia, she was instrumental in the Fathers obtaining a tract of land just a mile from her own center in Corwells Heights. That property is now the site of Holy Ghost Preparatory School in Bensalem, PA.

Feast Day of St. Katharine Drexel

Subsequently, the Sisters and the Holy Ghost fathers worked together in literally dozens of parishes and schools serving African-American communities in Philadelphia, New York, and the deep South.

Over the years hundreds of Spiritans, clergy, and lay associates served in these “unwanted” ministries, including a large number of Holy Ghost Fathers from Ireland who came under a special arrangement with the innovative Mother Katharine.