|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Black Catholics in United States |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Black Saints
St Benedict
Black Catholics in the United States
Father Augustus Tolton
It's Easter Sunday 1886 in Vatican City. At St. Peter's high altar, which usually is reserved for the pope, a priest ordained the day before in Rome's Basilica of St. John Lateran is saying his first Mass. He is Father Augustus Tolton, born April 1, 1854, on a plantation in Ralls County, Missouri, the second son of two Catholic slaves.
He is the first American recognized as Black ordained to the priesthood.
Peter Paul Tolton, who had been baptized by a missionary priest (later to be Bishop Peter Paul Lefevre, coadjutor of Detroit), married Martha Jane Chisley of a neighboring plantation in a Catholic Church in Bush Creek, not far from Mark Twain's Hannibal. Not long after the Dred Scott decision of 1857 which returned a slave by that name to bondage, Tolton and his family made a bid for freedom. Tolton served in the Union Army and died during the War Between the States. His wife and their four children, with the help of a Union soldier, made their way to Quincy, Illinois.
There Augustus (called Augustine in some texts) and his brothers caught the attention of their pastor who enrolled them in St. Peter's parish school, thus integrating it over the protests of the parents of white children. But the pastor and the Sisters of Notre Dame insisted that the Black children would stay; and so they did along with the white children. Augustus, who spent much time praying in the church, was encouraged to study for the priesthood. He applied to a local community of Franciscans, but he was not
admitted. Nonetheless, some of the priests tutored him privately in Latin, Greek, German, English, history and geography. Later, with the help of the bishop and the Father General of the Franciscans, Augustus was admitted to the College of the Propaganda in Rome. Students at the Franciscan College in Quincy took up a collection which, along with help from priests and the bishop, paid his way to Rome in 1880.
Upon his return to the United States, he was appointed pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic Church for Negroes in Quincy. Because he was the only Black priest in the country, he was invited to lecture and preach around the United States. At home, many whites came to his church and helped support it. But Father Tolton made little progress among Black people, who had strong prejudices against Catholics. He suffered from the actions of a white priest, forcing him to leave.
In 1889 the archbishop of Chicago, with the consent of Father Tolton's own bishop, invited him to head a Black church sponsored by a philanthropist, Mrs. Anne O'Neill. In 1890 he opened St. Monica's chapel in the heart of a Negro slum. He established another chapel in the Chicago in 1893. On July 9, 1897, returning from the annual clergy retreat, he was stricken by the heat and died in Mercy Hospital. More than 100 priests crowded his small chapel for his funeral. His body was taken to Quincy for burial.
Healy Brothers Succeed in White World
Three brothers of mixed blood preceded Father Tolton in the priesthood. They were James Augustine Healy (1830-1900), Patrick Francis Healy (1834-1910), and Alexander Sherwood Healy (1836-1875). Their father was an Irish immigrant; their mother a slave. The boys were taken from Georgia to Flushing, New York, where they attended a Quaker school. They were baptized later.
James, valedictorian of Holy Cross College's first class, entered the Sulpician seminary in Montreal, was sent to study in Paris, and was ordained in Notre Dame Cathedral. He began his priestly duties in Boston, where few parishioners would accept him. He then served at a home for homeless-boys, as secretary to the bishop and as chancellor. Then he was pastor of one of Boston's largest parishes for nine years. In 1875 he became bishop of Portland, Maine, where he became known as the "children's bishop." He was bishop until he died some 25 years later.
Patrick also went to Holy Cross. After studying at a Jesuit novitiate in Maryland and teaching at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, he returned to Holy Cross to teach and then to attend Georgetown University. He studied for the priesthood in Belgium, where he also awarded a Ph.D., believed to be
another first for a Black. After the Civil War he began teaching at Georgetown. He advanced to dean of studies, then acting president and finally president in 1874. He introduced science courses, reorganized the schools of law and medicine and beautified the campus. Prejudice apparently hampered his fund-raising efforts. The major building he planned, built after he retired for health reasons, is named for him.
Sherwood was ordained in Rome for the Boston diocese in 1858. He served as rector of Holy Cross Cathedral there from 1870 to 1875. Patrick apparently kept his racial origins secret; James did not hide his, but neither did he identify himself with the Black community.
The first Black ordained in the United States was Charles Randolph Uncles, a member of a society that was given the work of Negro missions in the United States by Pope Pius IX. Father Uncles was ordained in Baltimore in 1891 and became one of five priests who founded the Josephite fathers. The second Black, Father John Henry Dorsey, as a Josephite, was trained in the first integrated seminary in the United States but was not ordained until 1902. Father Stephen L. Theobald, the first American-trained diocesan priest, was ordained in St. Paul in 1910.
Blacks in Colonial Times
Before the American Revolution most Black Catholics lived in Maryland and in the areas that were to become Florida and Louisiana. Jesuit and Franciscan priests ministered to many of them, whether slave or free. With the 1793 revolution in Haiti, Black and white Catholic exiles settled in Baltimore, Charleston and New Orleans. Later, some Haitian-Americans from Baltimore moved west to Kentucky, but most were taken there as slaves by white, Maryland Catholics.
Father Louis W. Dubourg, who was to become bishop of New Orleans, began saying Mass in 1796 for Black Catholics in a chapel at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. A school for that group of Blacks was begun in 1828 by Father Jacques Joubert, who prevailed upon Cuban-born Elizabeth Lange to found a
teaching order of women. Educated and well-to-do, she was the daughter of refugees from Haiti. For about 10 years she ran a free school for Black children until her money ran out. It was then the priest met her. On June 2, 1829, she, with three other Haitian women as member, founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious order of Black women. The community's chapel, built in 1836, became the first Black Catholic church in the United States. The second Black order of women was the Sisters of the Holy Family, which was begun in New Orleans in 1842. The third, the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart, had its beginnings in 1916 in Savannah, Georgia.
Bishop John England opened a school for Black children in Charleston in 1835 but he was forced to close it because of threats from anti-Abolitionist mobs. In 1868 Bishop Patrick N. Lynch did open St. Peter's Church for Negroes in Charleston. Bishop James O'Connor in Pittsburgh blessed the Chapel of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin for Negroes in 1844, but it was short lived. Father Charles White began raising funds in the District of Columbia in 1863 and was able in 1866 to open the Blessed Martin de Porres Chapel; 10 years later it became St. Augustine's Church. The first Black parish in the United States was established by the Jesuits in 1864, St. Francis Xavier in Baltimore. Jesuits, with financial help from King Louis of Bavaria, in 1866 opened St. Ann's church and schools for Blacks in Cincinnati. In Louisville, Father John Spalding built St. Augustine's church as a Negro center in 1870. In St. Louis, a chapel in St. Francis Xavier's church had been open to Blacks since 1858, but it was not until 1873 that the Jesuits started St. Elizabeth's Church for Negroes.
Work Among Blacks Increases
St. Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society of Mill Hill (a section of London), founded in England in 1866 by Father Herbert Vaughan, later to become a cardinal, was the group charged by Pius IX to work among Blacks in this country. The first group of priests arrived in Baltimore in 1871. Up until 1892 the order had charge of eight parishes in Baltimore, Washington, Charleston and Louisville. The priests established a major seminary in Baltimore in 1888 and a minor seminary the next year. Because Mill Hill was active on three continents, it was felt an independent group was needed to work among Blacks in this country. So in 1893 under Father John R. Slattery (1851-1926) and under the auspices of James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore St. Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart--the Josephite fathers--was formed to work solely for the Blacks in America. Father Slattery was outspoken against prejudice by Catholics against Blacks, especially within the Church. He condemned the "uncatholic" opposition to the ordination of Black men to the priesthood.
The son of a wealthy New York Irish contractor and real estate speculator, Slattery left Columbia law school as a matter of conscience to become a missionary to American Blacks. He became a public advocate for Black men and women as individuals and an outspoken critic of the "Negro question." But he thought Blacks should keep silent about their plight and allow whites to defend their rights. Displaying that streak of what today would be called racism, Slattery also had disagreements with and doubts about Fathers Uncles and Dorsey. Father Slattery, who more and more praised the way Protestants were able to gain Black converts in the South, resigned from the Josephites in 1906 and eventually embraced Modernism and renounced the Catholic Church. He went to France.
Although Blacks met in convention as early as 1830 in Philadelphia, it was not until 1889 that Catholic Blacks convened. The organizer was Daniel Rudd born--of slave parents, as was so common with Black leaders of that era--in Bardstown in 1854. Following the war, he went to Springfield, Ohio, where he was educated. About 1886 he founded a newspaper that soon became the American Catholic Tribune. "The Catholic Church alone can break the color line," he wrote. "Our people should help Her do it." He lectured along those lines around the country. In 1888 he decided to call a Black Catholic Congress, which met January 1 through 4, 1889, at St. Augustine's parish in Washington, D.C.
Father Tolton said Mass, and preached, to open the congress. About 100 Black men from all parts of the country attended, along with members of the Catholic hierarchy and Black Protestant ministers. President Grover Cleveland received the delegates at the White House and Pope Leo XIII sent his blessing. The delegates issued a paper calling for Catholic schools, industrial education, admission to labor unions and better housing for Blacks. Similar congresses followed in Cincinnati (1890), Philadelphia (1892), Chicago (1893) and Baltimore (1894). At Philadelphia the delegates called on the bishops to address questions of discrimination against Blacks.
The fifth congress was the last for 93 years, probably because its members became more militant, according to one source. Significantly, the initial Black congress was the first gathering of lay Catholics in the United States, 11 months before a general lay Catholic Congress was held in Baltimore. Rudd, too, helped organize that one.
The next Black congress was not held until May 1987 at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Some 1,500 Blacks from 108 dioceses attended the congress, under the sponsorship of the Black bishops of the United States, the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, the Black Sisters Conference, the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators, and the Knights and Ladies of St. Peter Claver.
Delegates to the 1987 congress set as their priorities the evangelization of between 6 and 10 million Blacks who belong to no church, more study of Black cultural and historical contributions to the United States by local scholars, strengthening family values through the parish, training for Blacks for ministry at all levels, continued spiritual development, more involvement by Blacks in the Church's decisions, financial support for Catholic schools in Black communities.
In 1992 Congress VII was attended by 3,000 delegates in New Orleans, LA and 91 bishops. The theme for this Congress was Strengthening the African American Family. The agenda voted in by this elected body included 12 pastoral statements, and for the first time a set of public policy issues including health care and welfare reform. Congress VIII is scheduled for August, 1997 in Baltimore, MD.
The Church and Slavery
White Catholics, including religious, were among the slave holders. Jesuits owned about 300 slaves who worked their farms in Maryland in the 1830s. Some young women entering the Carmelite convent in Port Tobacco, Maryland, brought their slaves with them. The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky owned 30 slaves when President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore, the first U.S. bishop, kept a household servant who had been a slave on his mother's plantation, but it is unknown whether the servant had been freed. Bishop Carroll did permit one of his priests to speak out for the emancipation of slaves. Benedict J. Flaget, the first bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky, is believed to have kept a slave.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the bishop's second cousin and the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, was instrumental in getting a clause to eliminate the slave trade into the Maryland state
constitution.
The bishops of the United States did not speak out against slavery before the Civil War when they met in the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852. Among the reasons offered have been that they did not deal in what were considered political matters and that Catholics, too, were subject to discrimination. Father Hugh J. Nolan, editor of Pastoral Letters of the United States Catholic Bishops, wrote:
It is difficult to accept completely this interpretation. The bishops' official silence on the subject of slavery...may be attributed to several factors. First, many leading figures in public life were filled with the
spirit of the Compromise of 1850. Neither major political party nor any governmental agency felt itself prepared to deal constructively with the question. It was hoped that the matter, if shelved for a while, would work out its own solution. When the Democrats met in Baltimore less than a fortnight after the Plenary Council had closed, they chose, after forty-nine ballots, a compromise candidate for the presidency. Franklin Pierce was acceptable to both North and South largely because of his lack of a clear position on the question. The leading northern editors proposed that people turn their attention from barren issues of slavery and abolition to more fruitful questions of economy. The project of colonizing the freed Negroes in Liberia was still being discussed. The question was recognized as a moral as well as a political issue by some, but the assembled bishops treated it as purely a political issue and intended to apply to the disturbed condition of the times what they considered the most needed remedy, peace and calm. Even if the Council had promulgated a statement or decree concerning the institution of slavery, it probably would have served to keep alive a subject of controversy which moderate men at the moment hoped to stifle by silence. Furthermore, the apostolic delegate of this Council, Archbishop Francis P. Kenrick [of Baltimore], taught in his manual on moral theology that slaveholding could be tolerated under certain conditions, better, incidentally, than those under which the wage slave of that day worked. The archbishop also wrote that it would be unwise to stir up the unarmed slaves to a revolt that would lead only to their slaughter. A conservative, Kenrick apparently did not think the question needed further elucidation by a council. Unfortunately, neither the state nor the Church seem to have advanced sufficiently to see, as the Catholic bishops stated in 1958, that just treatment of the black man is primarily a moral issue.
After the war, the bishops in their 1866 council urged that the clergy and the people follow whatever plans individual bishops developed to help the emancipated slaves. But there was no coordinated approach adopted. In the 20th century the bishops have taken stronger and stronger stands on the rights of Blacks. In 1942, while addressing problems associated with World War II, they wrote:
The war has brought to the fore conditions that have long been with us. The full benefits of our free institutions and the rights of our minorities must be openly acknowledged and honestly respected. We ask this acknowledgment and respect particularly for our colored fellow citizens. They should enjoy the full measure of economic opportunities and advantages which will enable them to realize their hope and ambition to join with us in preserving and expanding in changed and changing social conditions our national heritage. We fully appreciate their many native gifts and aptitudes, which, ennobled and enriched by a true Christian life, will make them a powerful influence in the establishment of a Christian social order.
The bishops noted their letter from Pope Pius XII on the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the American hierarchy. Pius wrote in 1939: We confess that we feel a special paternal affection which is certainly inspired of Heaven for the Negro people dwelling among you; for in the field of religion and education we know they need special care and comfort and are very deserving of it. We, therefore, invoke an abundance of heavenly blessing and we pray fruitful success for those whose generous zeal is
devoted to their welfare.
In 1943 the U.S. bishops, writing about Blacks, said:
We owe these fellow citizens, who have contributed so largely to the development of our country, and for whose welfare history imposes on us a special obligation of justice, to see that they have in fact rights which are given them in our Constitution. This means no only political equality, but also fair economic and educational opportunities, a just share in public welfare projects, good housing without exploitation, and a full chance for the social advancement of their race. When given their rights in fact as in law, they will prize with us our national heritage and not lend ear to agitators whose real objective is not to improve but to destroy our way of living. They went on to say that every good citizen had a duty to relieve the racial tensions building in industrial centers and for priests and lay people to understand the problem and to work for a solution.
After the war, individual bishops, especially in San Antonio, St. Louis, Washington and New Orleans, took stands against segregation, especially in Catholic schools. The religious orders began accepting Black candidates.
Fifteen years after their mid-war statement -- after Brown vs. Board of Education, but before the lunch-counter sit-ins and the great civil rights upheaval of the sixties -- the bishops through their administrative board, headed by Francis Cardinal Spellman, issued a statement, Discrimination and Christian Conscience. "The heart of the race question," they said on November 14, 1958, "is moral and religious. It concerns the rights of man and our attitude toward our fellow man. If our attitude is governed by the great Christian law of love of neighbor and respect for his rights, then we can work out harmoniously the technique of making legal, educational, economic, and social adjustments. But if our hearts are poisoned by hatred, or even by indifference toward the welfare and rights of our fellow men,
then our nation faces grave internal crisis."
They also said that enforced segregation could not be reconciled with the Christian view of mankind, and quoted Pope Pius XII from 1956: "God did not create a human family made up of segregated, dissociated, mutually independent members." In concluding, the bishops said they hoped and prayed that "soberminded Americans of all religious faiths, in all areas of our land, will seize the mantle of leadership from the agitator and the racist. It is vital that we act now and act decisively. All must act quietly, courageously, and prayerfully before it is too late."
There were other statements on race in 1963, 1968, 1976, 1979, 1980. On November 14, 1979, in their 5,000-word pastoral letter, Brothers and Sisters to Us, they stated:
Racism is a sin: a sin that divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, and violates the fundamental human dignity of those called to be children of the same Father. Racism is the sin that says some human beings are inherently superior and others essentially inferior because of race. It is the sin that makes racial characteristics the determining factor for the exercise of human rights. It mocks the words of Jesus: "Treat the others the way you would have them treat you." Indeed, racism is more than a disregard for these words of Jesus; it is a denial of the truth of the dignity of each human being revealed by the mystery of the Incarnation. Healy Brothers Succeed in White World
Three brothers of mixed blood preceded Father Tolton in the priesthood. They were James Augustine Healy (1830-1900), Patrick Francis Healy (1834-1910), and Alexander Sherwood Healy (1836-1875). Their father was an Irish immigrant; their mother a slave. The boys were taken from Georgia to Flushing, New York, where they attended a Quaker school. They were baptized later.
James, valedictorian of Holy Cross College's first class, entered the Sulpician seminary in Montreal, was sent to study in Paris, and was ordained in Notre Dame Cathedral. He began his priestly duties in Boston, where few parishioners would accept him. He then served at a home for homeless-boys, as secretary to the bishop and as chancellor. Then he was pastor of one of Boston's largest parishes for nine years. In 1875 he became bishop of Portland, Maine, where he became known as the "children's bishop." He was
bishop until he died some 25 years later.
Patrick also went to Holy Cross. After studying at a Jesuit novitiate in Maryland and teaching at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, he returned to Holy Cross to teach and then to attend Georgetown University. He studied for the priesthood in Belgium, where he also awarded a Ph.D., believed to be
another first for a Black. After the Civil War he began teaching at Georgetown. He advanced to dean of studies, then acting president and finally president in 1874. He introduced science courses, reorganized the schools of law and medicine and beautified the campus. Prejudice apparently hampered his fund-raising efforts. The major building he planned, built after he retired for health reasons, is named for him.
Sherwood was ordained in Rome for the Boston diocese in 1858. He served as rector of Holy Cross Cathedral there from 1870 to 1875. Patrick apparently kept his racial origins secret; James did not hide his, but neither did he identify himself with the Black community.
The first Black ordained in the United States was Charles Randolph Uncles, a member of a society that was given the work of Negro missions in the United States by Pope Pius IX. Father Uncles was ordained in Baltimore in 1891 and became one of five priests who founded the Josephite fathers. The second Black, Father John Henry Dorsey, as a Josephite, was trained in the first integrated seminary in the United States but was not ordained until 1902. Father Stephen L. Theobald, the first American-trained diocesan priest, was ordained in St. Paul in 1910.
Currently there are 12 Black bishops, four ordinaries and eight auxiliary bishops.
Bishop Joseph L. Howze is the Ordinary of the Diocese of Biloxi, Bishop J.
Terry Steib, S.V.D. is the ordinary for the Diocese of Memphis, Bishop
Wilton D. Gregory is the Ordinary of the Diocese of Belleville, and Bishop
Elliott G. Thomas is the Ordinary of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The other Black members of the hierarchy, in order of seniority, are:
Bishops Moses B. Anderson of Detroit,
John H. Ricard, S.S.J of Baltimore,
Curtis J. Guillory, S.V.D. of Galveston-Houston,
Leonard Olivier, S.V.D. of Washington, D.C.,
Dominic Carmen of New Orleans,
George Murry, S.J. of Chicago,
Edward K. Braxton of St. Louis.
Bishop Joseph A Francis, S.V.D. is retired auxiliary bishop of Newark, N.J.
On September 9, 1984, then 10 Black bishops issued their own pastoral letter on evangelization, What We Have Seen and Heard. In it they said:
We are in a position to counter the assumption which many have advanced that to become a Catholic is to abandon one's racial heritage and one's people! The Catholic Church is not a "White Church" nor a "Euro-American Church." It is essentially universal and, hence, Catholic. The Black presence within the
American Catholic Church is a precious witness to the universal character of Catholicism.
(WebMaster's note: One of the authors of the above document was, the late Archbishop James Patterson Lyke, O.F.M., D.D., Ph.D., who was to become the highest ranking black in the American Catholic Church, a Franciscan and a graduate of Quincy University.) At their General Meeting in November 1986, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops established a standing Committee for Black Catholics. Its first chairman is to be elected this November and a Secretariat for Black Catholics established next January.
Black Catholics in the United States now number about 2.3 million -- up from 200,000 75 years ago, 300,000 in 1940 and 600,000 in 1960. For the most part, Black Catholics live in the seven dioceses of Louisiana, in the three dioceses around New York, and in those of Chicago, Washington, D.C., Miami,
Los Angles, Detroit, and Galveston-Houston and Beaumont in Texas. There are about 300 Black priests, 600 sisters, 75 brothers and 400 permanent deacons.
First Black Saint Was Slave
Delegates to the 1893 Black Catholic Congress in Chicago resolved:
With thorough confidence in the rectitude of our course, in the enduring love of Mother Church, and the consciousness of our priesthood, we show our devotion to the church, our jealously of her glory and our love for her history....above all things, we rejoice that our church, the church of our love, the church of our faith, has not failed to stand by her historic record. For did not Holy Church canonize Augustine and Monica, Benedict the Moor and Cyprian.... They could have cited other figures from Church history.
St. Moses the Hermit, who lived in the 4th century, is the first Black to be identified as a Catholic priest. He also may or may not have been the first Black saint. Three early popes were Africans -- Victor I (189-l99), Melchiades (311-314) and Gelasius I (492-496) -- and saints as well, but history does not record whether they were Blacks.
Moses, a name he took upon joining hermit monks at Skete in what was then southern Egypt, had been a slave to an Egyptian governmental official. Besides being a huge and strong man, the slave also was incorrigible, so much so that his master threw him out of his household. And he organized a band of brigands. Fleeing the law, he somehow joined the hermits. After years of prayer and penance, he was accepted as one of them. His qualities of leadership led to his selection as their abbot and, in order to fulfill his duties, ordination to the priesthood. Moses' skill as a spiritual director became widely known; a series of dialogues with him is recorded by St. John Cassian (360-433) in his "Book of Conferences." Moses was killed when Saracens raided his monastery.
St. Cyprian (190-258) and St. Augustine (354-430) -- a Doctor of the Church--are widely regarded as Blacks but no proof exists. Saints known to be Blacks include St. Benedict the Moor (1524 1589) and St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639). St. Elesbaan (d. 555) is often listed among the Roman Catholic saints although he probably was a Monophysite and thus a schismatic. Beatified Blacks include Blessed Anthony, a Franciscan (d. 1549), and Blessed Gabra Michael (1790-1855). Twenty-two Catholics slain for their faith in 1885 are known as the Martyrs of Uganda. Elesbaan, an emperor, and Gabra were Ethiopians. Blessed Anthony and St. Benedict were slaves.
Someday there could be an American Black saint, Peter Toussaint (1766-1853), who first arrived in this country with his Haitian master. After going back to Haiti and then returning to New York, Toussaint, a hairdresser, became the friend of many wealthy women. He collected money for charity, nursed the victims of a Yellow Fever epidemic, gave shelter and training to Black youths. His cause for beatification has been started.
Other causes for sainthood are Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, OSP, foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1829. These are the first sisters of African descent in the world. Before the Civil War, despite hardships and poverty, the sisters had established schools for Black children and became a home for Black orphans in Baltimore, MD. Henriette Delille the foundress for the Sisters of the Holy Family of Black Sisters in the United States in 1842 is also being sponsored for beatification. These sisters who were "Free People of Color" ministered to the slaves and the poor Blacks of the city of New Orleans. There is also an effort to promote Sister Thea Bowman for sainthood who died in 1990. Sister Thea was a teacher, a singer, a dancer, and a lecturer and tirelessly promoted pride in Black culture.
Saint Benedict
BENEDICT the Black Also known as Benedict the Moor; il Moro; Benedict the African
Memorial 4 April
Profile
His parents, Christopher and Diana, were slaves who had been taken from Africa to Sicily. Granted his freedom at age 18, but remained as an employee of his former master. Scorned and mocked by others as poor as himself, due to his origin and skin, he retained a natural cheerfulness.
He met with, and became enamored of a group of Franciscan hermits near Palermo. Benedict sold and gave away what little he had, and joined this group. Novice master and reluctant superior of the friars in Palermo. When his term ended, he happily returned to in the friary kitchen. Benedict never referred to possessions as "mine" but always "ours." Had gifts for prayer and the guidance of souls. His humility and cheerfulness set an example that helped reform his order. On his death, King Philip III of Spain paid for a special tomb for the simple friar.
Benedict was not a Moor, but the Italian "il Moro" for "the Black" has been misinterpreted as referring to a Moorish heritage.
Born 1526 @ Messina, Italy on the estate of Chevalier de Lanza a San Fratello
Died 1589 of natural causes; body reported incorrupt when exhumed several years later
Beatified 1743
Canonized 1807 by Pope Pius VIII
Patronage of African missions, African American, black missions, black people, Negroes
Roman Catholic bishops elect 1st African American president
Chicago native to preside three years; Baltimorean chosen to head committee
By John Rivera
Sun Staff
Originally published November 14, 2001
WASHINGTON - In a vote that church leaders called a sign of their growing diversity, the body representing the nation's Roman Catholic bishops elected its first African-American president yesterday.
Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, 53, a native of Chicago who leads the Diocese of Belleville in southern Illinois, will preside over the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for the next three years. The bishops, on the second day of their annual fall meeting, followed tradition in elevating Gregory, who had served as vice president of the conference, to its presidency.
"The Catholic Church, because we are a 'catholic' church, is no stranger to cultural, linguistic and cultural diversity," Gregory said at a news conference after his election.
The bishops also elected Baltimore Bishop Gordon D. Bennett, an auxiliary to Cardinal William H. Keeler, as chairman of its Committee for African-American Catholics. The post will provide Bennett with a platform for leadership on issues affecting the nation's 2 million black Catholics.
Bennett, 55, who since his 1998 ordination as bishop has been the urban vicar, supervising the city's Catholic churches and schools, has been involved locally in forging ties between inner city and suburban parishes through an initiative called Beyond the Boundaries. He will retain his duties in Baltimore as he heads the bishops' committee.
"I'm delighted to be asked to serve," Bennett said. "It has national and international responsibilities. I'm hopefully going to have a lot of opportunities to learn from Catholics with black skin all over the world."
Gregory and Bennett are two of 13 African-American bishops in the American Catholic Church, which has about 300 African-American priests.
Although Gregory's election was expected, there was a sense that history was being made as the bishops cast their ballots in the meeting room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. For the first time, the voting was conducted electronically.
After the results were announced, his brother bishops rose and applauded.
"Obviously it's historic, and he's exactly the man to make that history," Bennett said. "Difference need not be a disqualifying factor in exercising either leadership or influence."
Gregory is viewed as a moderate in the church and is considered an affable pastor who is a competitive racquetball player and who personally answers his e-mail.
Gregory, whose father was a computer programmer, was born on Chicago's South Side. His parents had no religious affiliation, but saw the value of a Catholic education for their son and two daughters.
"We lived in the inner city, a working class, poor community, and they grew increasingly concerned about the quality of education in the public schools," he said.
Gregory was baptized as a Catholic in the sixth grade, and shortly thereafter he decided he would become a priest. He entered the high school seminary, continued through college and was ordained a priest in 1973. He later earned a doctorate in liturgy from a pontifical university in Rome and returned to Chicago to begin teaching future priests.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the late Archbishop of Chicago whom Gregory describes as a mentor, tapped the young seminary professor in 1983 as an auxiliary bishop.
Gregory said he hoped his election would serve for the world "as an expression of the love of the Catholic Church for people of color."
For African-American Catholics "who may have grown lukewarm in the practice of their faith ... I hope it is an invitation to them to return to an active practice of our faith."
And for African-Americans with no religious affiliation, he said, "I hope it's a positive statement about what we as Catholics believe and how we should try to live."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home
