Diocese of Lafayette
Statue honors saint with ties to Saint Joseph’s
A new statue of St. Katharine Drexel was dedicated at the Rensselaer college campus on June 8. (Photo by Nick Cusack)
By Nick Cusack (The Catholic Moment)
RENSSELAER — A bronze statue honoring a saint who once walked on the campus of Saint Joseph’s College was dedicated June 8.
As part of her ministry to black people and American Indians, St. Katharine Drexel funded St. Joseph’s Indian Normal School, across the road from the college. The Philadelphia heiress, who later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, visited the school in 1888. The building, owned by the college, later was renamed Drexel Hall.
Today, the statue of her at the college stands in the walkway between the education buildings and the fieldhouse — an apt place because of St. Katharine Drexel’s belief in the well-rounded student, Saint Joseph’s President Ernest Mills said. Mills also pointed out that her feet were on the ground, not on a pedestal. “She’s prepared to be where we are,” he said.
St. Katharine Drexel was born in 1858, died in 1955, and was canonized in 2000. Stephanie Morris, director of archives for the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, said the statue is very life-like, though taller than the saint.
It shows her walking with her hands folded under her scapular — as she and her nuns would have walked and prayed. “She’s walking with her God, she’s talking to her God,” Morris said.
The statue was commissioned by James and Esther McMahon. James McMahon is a 1961 graduate of the college and had an aunt who was a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament. “This statue reminds us who we are and where we are going,” he said.
Mills noted the connection between the founders of Saint Joseph’s — the Missionaries of the Precious Blood — and St. Katharine Drexel’s order. They both represent redemption for those who are marginalized and forgotten, he said. McMahon said he was pleased about where the college chose to put the figure — where many will see it.
“It’s the students who I hope receive the message of St. Katharine Drexel,” he said. Precious Blood Father Leonard Kostka blessed the statue and said it needed to tell the story so that someone going by at the “speed of the Indy 500” gets the message.
“How do you bless a saint?” Father Kostka said. “She’s the one blessing us.” When some sisters who knew St. Katharine saw a photo of the statue, they said it was as if she were walking toward them, said Elly McNelis, an associate of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
The statue needed to be so realistic because St. Katharine Drexel was, through her habit, rules and decrees, a methodical person herself, McNelis said. Sculptor Don Wilkins, of North Fort Myers, Fla., said he tried to make the statue as much like a picture as he could, including a wave in the saint’s collar. (An older sister told him, however, that the collar would never have a wave in it if it were starched properly.)
McNelis said that Wilkins, who also has sculpted a statue of Saint Joseph’s mascot, a puma, told her, “I can’t sculpt her a saint, but I can sculpt her Mother Katharine.”
(Go to the website of The Catholic Moment) †