Drexel, Katherine (Saint)

Hearing. Born and raised in high society and heiress to a $20 million fortune, at age 30 she took a vow of poverty and entered a convent, using all of her inheritance to found the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891, working with poor Blacks and Native Americans. In 1925 she founded Xavier University of Louisiana. The first of two posthumous miracles attributed to her intercession after prayer to her was when teenager Robert Gutherman allegedly was cured of hearing loss in 1975, leading the Vatican to declare Drexel "Blessed". The second miracle was the alleged curing of Amy Wall's deafness at age 4, circa 1997. On the basis of these two claimed miracles, the Vatican declared Drexel a saint in 2000, the second American-born Catholic saint.