World

U.S. Heiress, Chinese Martyrs Now Saints

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 28, 2000 / 10:34 AM EDT / CBS

Pope John Paul has declared the Roman Catholic Church's first Chinese saints.

In a Vatican ceremony Sunday, the pontiff added 87 Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries to its list of saints.

Pope John Paul II decreed sainthood Sunday for a Philadelphia heiress who shunned both the label and the life of a socialite, devoting her years and fortune instead to schools for American Indians and blacks.

Katharine Drexel, 1858-1955, spurred efforts in her time to combating "all forms of racism through education and social services," John Paul said in the rain-soaked canonization ceremony in St. Peter's Square.

Reuters

Pope John Paul II at Sunday's canonization ceremony.

Beijing attacked the Vatican on Sunday for canonizing 120 Catholic martyrs in China, calling the saints "evil-doing sinners" who raped, looted and worked as agents of Western imperialism.

The canonizations on China's National Day will severely hamper normalization of relations between Beijing and the Holy See, which do not have diplomatic ties, the official Xinhua news agency quoted a foreign ministry statement as saying.

"The government, people and the Catholic Church of China hereby express their utmost indignation and strong protest against this matter," the statement said.

Pope John Paul canonized the martyrs, who the Vatican says died for their faith, at a ceremony in St Peter's Square on Sunday despite a barrage of protests from China.

Beijing says most were executed for breaking laws when colonial forces invaded or for "bullying the Chinese people" during the 1839-42 Opium War or the 1898-1900 Boxer Uprising.

Touched By A Saint
Born with nerve damage to her ears, Amy Wall was all but deaf.

Doctors said they could do nothing. So her family turned down a different avenue - a road of faith.

The 7-year-old girl's parents took her to a convent in a Philadelphia suburb in search of help, a cure, a last hope.

At the Church of the Blessed Sacrament the Wall family arrived to pray in a room beneath the chapel. There, in the marble crypt, lie the remains of Mother Drexel.

Athough during her life, Drexel's work never involved the healing of body, religious pilgrims continue to flock to the church.

"If you ask for her prayers, she will pray for you," Sister Patricia Lynch said of Drexel.

And like so many others before her, Amy did pray while holding a shred of cloth from Drexel's clothing to her ear. Her hearing returned, and many, including Vatican officials, called it miraculous.

"We thank God for the blessing of this wonderful miracle," Amy's mother, Connie Wall, said. "What a wonderful day."

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"As is known to all, some foreign Catholic missionaries were the very perpetrators and accomplices in colonialist and imperialist invasion of China in the contemporary history," the statement said.

"Some of those canonized by the Vatican this time perpetrated outrages such as raping and looting in China and committed unforgivable crimes against the Chinese people."

The new saints -- 87 Chinese and 33 missionaries -- were killed between 1648 and 1930, most in the anti-foreign Boxer uprising, when roving bands of peasants slaughtered Western missionaries, their families and Chinese converts.

The 80-year-old Pope said the move should not be seen as a defense of colonialism but a desire to honor all Chinese.

But China called it "a gross insult to the Chinese people's patriotic resistance against foreign aggression and oppression."

"In doing so, the Vatican has seriously hurt the national pride and dignity of the Chinese people."

Drexel, daughter of a Philadelphia banker, made only a reluctant debut on the social scene and shunned offers of marriage to take a vow of poverty at 30. Pope Leo XIII encouraged her to become a missionary, after she had sought priests for the Indian missions she was staffing in the U.S. Southwest.

Drexel founded nearly 60 schools and missions, chief among them Xavier University in Louisiana. The Catholic institution is predominantly black.

"She's an example of how America can use its wealth. She's shown us the way," Jackie Baff, a volunteer for Catholic organizations from Lake Charles, Louisiana, said Sunday.

Hundreds attended the ceremony, coming from sites across the United States where Drexel had worked.

Drexel is the fourth American to be named to the sainthood.