Precious Blood School started its history as St. Boniface Indian School. St. Boniface Indian Industrial School was a Catholic Boarding school for Indian children. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions and Heiress-turned-nun Mother Katharine Drexel founded the school in 1890, less than six decades after the end of the California Mission Era. Mother Katherine Drexel personally paid for the site and the school north of Banning, a site situated in the shadow of one sacred mountain and a view of another.
Every year, over one hundred students attended grades 1-8 at St. Boniface school. They learned reading, writing, Bible History, and basic arithmetic from the Sisters of St. Joseph, an order of teaching nuns who served missions throughout the Southwest. Priests at the school taught students the Catechism, and expected their charges to be confirmed Catholics upon graduating the school
The Superintendent-Priests who ran St. Boniface considered their work a continuation of the missionary work of Father Serra, and several themes present in the California Missions were also characteristic of St. Boniface. The Priests and teaching Nuns required students to attend Mass and Catechism, infused the students' lives with Catholic morality, and assigned every student a considerable workload to maintain the school.
Father Florian Hahn, the first active Superintendent, was a dynamic Jesuit from Germany. He ran the St. Boniface school for over 23 years, fostering student activity in the school's band and offering spiritual guidance through the Christmas 1899 earthquake. He is still buried in the St. Boniface cemetery.
The Priests ran St. Boniface as an Indian boarding school until 1952. However, by the 1930's, Franciscan Superintendent Father Gerard Brenekke admitted an increasing number of non-Indian children with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. These new students were from broken homes, and in some cases ordered to St. Boniface by the courts. In addition to the new boarder makeup, the Franciscan priests increased their enrollment of day students due to the lack of a local parish school.
Read more about the History and the Cemetary Restoration project at:
NOTES
HISTORY
This page was last updated: September 17, 2008
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Blessed Kateri Tekawitha( formerly known as Precious Blood Parish)
St. Boniface Church was located north of Gilman and west of 8th St.
It was part of the St. Boniface Indian School Complex, which was rebuilt after a 1900 earthquake almost destroyed it.
Some interesting facts:
Did you know?
On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II solemnly decreed that Katharine Drexel, Founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Native and African American People is a saint of the Catholic Church. The very same person who came to Banning and founded St. Boniface Indian School.
Links:
Prayer to St. Katherine Drexel
Ever loving God,
You called Saint Katharine Drexel
to share the message of the Gospel and the life of the Eucharist
With the poor and oppressed among the Native and African-American peoples.
Through her intercession may we grow in the faith and love
that will enable us to be united as brothers and sisters in You.
We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
One God, forever and ever. Amen
Saint Katharine Drexel, friend to the poor, pray for us!
The patient and humble endurance of the cross,whatever nature it may be, is the highest work we have to do. ~ Katherine Drexel
By Judy Ball
St. Katharine Drexel (1858-1955)
Young Katharine Drexel made headlines in 1889 when she entered a convent and gave up the family banking fortune, then valued at $7 million. Rather than live a life of advantage, the Philadelphia-born heiress wanted to devote herself to the education of Native Americans and African-Americans.
Despite the luxury and privilege she knew in her early years, Katharine was exposed to the realities of poverty. Her father and stepmother shared their wealth with the poor and welcomed the needy to their home several times each week. In a private audience with Pope Leo XIII, Katharine, then 20, pleaded with him to help the neglected Native Americans by sending priests to serve them. “Why not become a missionary yourself?” the pontiff replied.
It took another 10 years before she answered the Holy Father’s question—and God’s call. Finding no religious order that answered her sense of mission, Katharine Drexel received permission to found the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She drew on trust funds established by her father at his death and organized a system of schools and missions for Native Americans as well as blacks.
Perhaps her most noteworthy achievement was the establishment of Xavier University of New Orleans in the mid-1920s, the first university for blacks in the United States. Katharine Drexel, who lived to 96, was a daring, prophetic and resourceful woman who knew that God had work for her to do on behalf of two peoples who had been largely overlooked in 19th-century America.
At her canonization in 2000, Pope John Paul II praised her for choosing “to give not just her fortune but her whole life totally to the Lord.” Her feast day is March 3.
