National Black Catholic History Month: Venerable Pierre Toussaint

The formerly enslaved hairdresser, philanthropist and devoted Catholic Pierre Toussaint could one day soon be named a saint.

Toussaint was born into slavery in Haiti in the 18th century. By the time he was in his early 20s, he'd moved with his owner's family to New York City, where his owner, who had been trying to escape the Haitian Revolution, apprenticed him to a hairdresser.

He picked up the trade quickly and soon was hairdresser to some of the city's elite. He was allowed to keep much of his earnings for himself and became a wealthy man, though still technically enslaved. When his owner died, leaving a destitute widow, Toussaint used his considerable fortune to help support the devastated woman. Although he bought the freedom of his sister and several other enslaved blacks -- including the woman who would become his wife -- Toussaint never actually purchased his own freedom.

When his owner's wife died about 1807, she freed Toussaint in her will. As a free man, he continued to practice his trade and fed many destitute families and cared for orphans, including his niece, Euphemia, whom he and his wife raised as their own child.

He was said to have attended Mass at 6 a.m. daily for decades at St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street (he was not allowed to enter St. Patrick's Old Cathedral because he was black).

He is considered by many to be one of the founders of what would become Catholic Charities.

Toussaint died June 30, 1853. His body was moved to the new St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in 1990, about the same time that the cause for his canonization was opened. He was declared venerable -- the step before canonization -- in 1996.

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National Black Catholic History Month: St. Josephine Bakhita

(The video above is a Portuguese-language film about St. Josephine Bakhita's life)

The woman who came to be known as Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born in the Darfur region of the Sudan circa 1869. She was kidnapped by slavers while still a child and sold several times, the last time to an Italian consul living in Khartoum, Sudan.

When the consul and his family returned to Italy, Bakhita went with them. In her early 20s, she became a Catholic. By her late 20s, she told her owners that she wished to officially join the Canossian Sisters. By 1896, she had professed her vows. She served the community as a cook, doing embroidery and attending to the door, according to Catholic Online.

Bakhita died on Feb. 8, 1947. Her last words were said to be "Our lady, our lady," in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She was canonized on Oct. 1, 2000. During her canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II described her as "a shining advocate of genuine emancipation." Her feast day is Feb. 8, the anniversary of her death.

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National Black Catholic History Month: Mother Mary Lange

If Mother Mary Lange, OSP, is canonized, she will become the first black American woman saint.

Elizabeth Clarisse Lange was born in the late 18th century in what is now Haiti (some sources claim she was born in Cuba) to a wealthy family.
By 1813 or so, she was living in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was part of a community of French-speaking black Catholics. By the 1820s, she was educating black children in her home at her expense. In 1828, a priest approached her and two other black women about teaching more children and she explained that what she wanted most of all was to dedicate her life to God and become a nun.

Although no black women were nuns in the U.S. at that time, the priest and archbishop of the diocese agreed to sponsor her. She took vows and became known as Sister Mary in 1828, according to the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

She established and was the first superior general of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, which was the world's first order of nuns founded by a woman of African heritage. As part of the order, she nursed the sick during a cholera epidemic and worked as a domestic at a seminary, among other tasks, according to the Mother Lange Guild. After the Civil War, when black children who had been orphaned by the war came to Baltimore in droves, Mother Mary Lange headed efforts to care for them.

She died on Feb. 3, 1882, well into her 90s.

In 1991, with the approval of the Vatican, William Cardinal Keeler, then Baltimore's Archbishop, opened the formal investigation of Mother Mary Lange's life which many hope will lead to her canonization.

Read more about Mother Mary Lange at a website devoted to the cause for her canonization.

(Image via National Catholic Review)

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National Black Catholic History Month: Father Augustus Tolton

Some people say Father Augustus Tolton was the first black American priest, but that's not clear (I'll discuss why in a later post). What is clear, however, is that he was born into slavery and was the first child of two American slaves to be ordained a priest.

Tolton was born in 1854 to the enslaved Peter Paul Tolton and Martha Jane Chisley in Missouri, and baptized Catholic. He felt the call to the priesthood as a young man, but was rejected by multiple American seminaries because he was black. He was ordained in Rome in 1886, and returned to the U.S., where he ministered in the Chicago area for many years. He died of heat stroke on July 9, 1897, as his mother, sisters and several nuns prayed nearby.

The Official Organization for the Promotion of the Cause of Canonization of Father Augustus Tolton (1854-1897) is working toward, well, the canonization of Father Tolton. There is also a Facebook page for the effort.



(Image via OSV.com)

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It's National Black Catholic History Month

Follow my National Black Catholic History Month tag for more information on black Catholic notables.