FROM SLAVE TO PRIEST

A Biography of the Reverend Augustine Tolton, The First Black Priest of the United States

by Sister Caroline Hemesath

Ignatius Press, 2006

251 pages, $17.95

To order: 1-800-651-1531

Ignatius.com

This inspiring story about a little-known figure in American history raises serious questions about the treatment of black Catholics in the United States by clergy and laypeople. It documents many missed opportunities for Catholics to evangelize among blacks due to prejudice and fear.

Yet at the heart of the story is the hand of God working in the life of a young black man who persevered amid hardships and gained the support of a number of priests, nuns and laypeople.

Augustine Tolton was born into slavery in Missouri in 1854 and baptized by a priest provided by his Catholic slaveholders. When he was 7, his mother fled the plantation with him, his older brother and his infant sister. Avoiding Confederate soldiers, they floated on a rowboat across the Mississippi, as musket balls whizzed, and landed on the shore of the free state of Illinois. The bravery of Tolton’s mother was matched by his father, who had escaped the plantation at the onset of the Civil War to enlist in a Union brigade, where he was killed.

Growing up in Quincy, Ill., Tolton was strong physically and persistent spiritually. When he showed signs of a priestly vocation, his mother rejoiced and prayed constantly. Though at the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore the U.S. bishops had exhorted clergy and laity to work against prejudice and accept blacks into their churches and seminaries, the message was poorly accepted.

When Tolton applied to seminaries, they pleaded “patience” and “prudence,” pointing out that a black might turn white candidates away and jeopardize the gains the Church had made in a Protestant country.

A pastor in Quincy, however, was a strong-willed German who rallied others to Tolton’s cause. After many years of frustration, Tolton was accepted at a seminary in Rome.

In the Eternal City, the author writes, “Augustine sensed the sublime delight of the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God. … The oppressive weight of segregation was removed; the race barriers were gone."

After his ordination in 1886, the faculty voted to send him back to Quincy. He was made pastor of the area’s one black Catholic parish, but met prejudice and rejection, and was soon transferred to Chicago, where he founded a parish for black Catholics.

Worn from overwork, nursing a constant cough from visiting unsanitary tenements, Father Tolton collapsed at the age of 43. He never regained consciousness and died after receiving last rites, having lived a fully Catholic life.

This is a well-told story. The only drawback is in the subtitle, which calls Father Tolton the “first black priest of the United States,” a description that may be misleading, as Sister Hemesath explains in the preface. Actually, he was the first U.S. priest born of two black slaves. Ordained before him was James Augustine Healy (who later became the first bishop of Portland, Maine), born of a “mulatto” slave mother and a white Irishman.

The whole issue of who was the “first black priest” has more to do with racial semantics and skin color, however, than with the fine character of Father Tolton that Sister Hemesath is more interested in describing in the book.

Stephen Vincent writes from

Wallingford, Connecticut.