African-American Catholics have developed a rich spiritual patrimony for 500 years that has nourished holy men and women — six of whom have active causes for canonization.
BALTIMORE — They have some of the most powerful stories of forgiveness, love and mercy that the Catholic Church in the United States can offer, but remain largely unknown, even among U.S. Catholics. But as the U.S. bishops seek to promote peace and harmony in America’s communities, the heroic holiness of black Catholic men and women whose causes for canonization are under way could be the impetus to healing that the Church — and U.S. society — is looking for.
Six men and women from the 19th and 20th centuries — Servant of God Father Augustus Tolton, Venerable Pierre Toussaint, Venerable Mother Henriette Delille, Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, and now Servant of God Julia Greeley — are under consideration for canonization
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The Church has African saints who were their contemporaries, such as St. Charles Lwanga and St. Josephine Bakhita, who was a slave once and whose image is being put on the dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. But St. Charles is Ugandan and St. Josephine is Sudanese.
A cause for canonization is a process that is said to cost between $250,000 and $550,000.
Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry of Chicago is the postulator for the cause of Father Tolton, who was born in slavery, became the first black priest in the U.S. and was given a mandate by Rome to be a missionary to the United States. In this exclusive interview with the Register, Bishop Perry discusses the black Catholic spiritual tradition that nourished men and women to respond with love and mercy to all in the face of hatred and injustice and why their stories, and Father Tolton’s, have a powerful testimony that can help the Church heal American society.
Bishop Perry, why is Father Augustus Tolton, Servant of God, a saint for our time?
A couple of reasons: Given the peculiar 19th-century post-war Reconstruction period, which was a pretty tumultuous period for our country, the issue of race by no means was solved by the Civil War, although it ended slavery. The country had no corporate program for assimilating blacks into mainstream society. So they were left kind of haphazardly out there to experience whatever they were going to experience and be treated every which way. [Father Tolton] turned out to be something of a pioneer in race relations: By reason of his priestly ordination, he was immediately disposed to assist anybody. But mainstream society, and even the Church, did not allow blacks and whites to be in the same space together. And when they came together rather naturally — people coming together, whites coming to his parish in Quincy [Illinois], wanting to attend his Masses and hear him preach and have him listen to their confessions — people just recoiled. It was a visual that posed a lot of dissonance for people. The social ambiance just didn’t allow it.
In a sense, he was a pioneer of inclusion and a kind of multiculturalism, before those terms were even coined. In the midst of that, he suffered a great deal and somehow was able to come out heroically, virtue-wise, by his own suffering and the denunciation that was laid against him for allowing all that to happen. Essentially, he was kicked out of Quincy and then came to Chicago to start all over in the last years of his life.
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