A group of Catholic activists in Baltimore are asking Pope Francis to “immediately” canonize the first African-American saint and have proposed six candidates for the title – all but one were born into slavery or worked to abolish it.
Black saints from Africa and elsewhere have been canonized, but none from the United States.
“Many of us in America are embarrassed that the church where we worship does not have African-American saints of the United States recognized by the highest church authorities,” says the Change.org petition, written by the group and addressed to Pope Francis. which collected nearly 900 signatures.
“With 899 saints, you, as Pope, have canonized the most saints in the history of the Catholic Church. It’s time for African Americans to ‘march’ with this number,” the petition reads.
The group, led by the social justice committee of St. Anne’s Church in East Baltimore, along with parishioners of the local churches of St. Francis Xavier and St. Wenceslas, began its movement in November and sent more than 1,000 letters to the Vatican on December 14. , 2021, reports the Religious News Service.
The candidates include two men and four women who have already been recognized by the Vatican as either Servants of God or Venerable Ones, which are respectively the first and second important steps in the canonization process.
Among the Servants of God are Julia Greeley, known as the Denver “Angel of Mercy”, Mother Mary Lange, founder and first superior of the Flattened Sisters of Providence, and Thea Bowman, the only African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Eternal Adoration.
Honorable candidates include Pierre Toussaint, called the father of Catholic charities in New York, Henriette Delisle, founder of a Creole monastic community called the Sisters of the Holy Family, and Augustus Tolton, America’s first known black Catholic priest.
All candidates for sainthood were “either born into slavery or taught the enslaved at personal risk to themselves,” the petition says.
The next step towards canonization is beatification, in which the Vatican declares a person “blessed”, confirming that he performed two miracles while interceding with God.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Brunik said all six alleged saints are under investigation and in some cases their “heroic virtues” have been officially recognized, according to the Wall Street Journal.
More than 10,000 people are recognized as saints, including 11 Americans and 899 people recognized by Pope Francis. There are a number of black saints, mostly from Africa, including the Peruvian Saint Martin de Porres (1579-1639), who cared for the orphans, the poor and the sick.
The next step towards canonization is beatification, in which the Vatican declares someone “blessed”, confirming that they have performed two miracles.
The group, led by a social justice committee at St. Anne’s Church in East Baltimore (above), along with parishioners at local churches of St. Francis Xavier and St. Wenceslas, began their movement in November.
Ralph Moore, one of the movement’s leaders, called on Pope Francis to reconsider the “unfair” canonization process, which they say results in “unequal outcomes.”
While the aforementioned candidates have been celebrated for their contributions, holiness is a process that can take hundreds of years due to the qualifications being a miracle.
“The simple reason why there are no blacks [American] Catholic saints today in that they have been offered more recently. A person becomes a saint usually within decades, and sometimes even centuries,” Kathleen Sprouse Cummings, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, told CNN.
Baltimore’s advocates also called on Pope Francis to reconsider the “unfair” canonization process, which they say results in “unequal outcomes.” They argue that the Vatican should give less importance to miracles and more to the adversity that African-American Catholics have overcome and the work they have done for the church despite such obstacles.
“African Americans and black people, especially in this country, have survived enslavement, experienced segregation even within churches, survived mass incarceration and mass poverty, and yet we have remained faithful,” Ralph Moore, one of the leaders of the movement, reported by the Religious News Service .
“Martin Luther King said that undeserved suffering is redemptive, and we think we have had undeserved suffering in this country, in this church, and that should be enough,” he added.
About 50 years ago, Moore went to St. Pius Church in West Baltimore one night with friends and painted statues of Jesus and Mary black. They also painted Jesus black in the image of the Way of the Cross, but left alone the white Roman soldiers insulting him as a declaration of black liberation.
“We were trying to make the church relevant,” Moore told the Religious News Service, adding that he sat in the church and wondered, “Why are all the images here white?”
Moore said the effort to recognize six African Americans as saints is part of an attempt to “teach the institution about what God is because the practice of white supremacy does not come from God, but from the people.”
A Change.org petition calling for Pope Francis to have the candidates canonized has garnered nearly 900 signatures.
Delores Moore, who is not related to Ralph Moore and also sits on the committee, said many people have not heard of the six candidates for canonization. “We saw this as a real fairness issue. We found that if you don’t tell people, they won’t know and they won’t change,” she told the news outlet.
“We understand that we must speak out. We’ll be outcasts for a while until people catch up, and that’s okay,” she added.
Supporters say they have garnered nationwide support from people of different races and faiths since they unveiled their plan last November.
“This lack of church attention is so blatant that even white people understand it. This endeavor took on a life of its own when people were informed,” Betty Lutz, a white member of the committee, told Religious News Service.
“Although I was raised a Catholic, I never thought of a white saint or a black saint. I did not realize that there were no (African American) saints, and as soon as it presented itself to me, I saw the realization of this. I was proud to support this cause,” Mary Sewell, also a member of the committee, told the news source.
“The canonization of the six current saint candidates will be a very powerful statement of reckoning and reconciliation,” the petition reads.
He concludes, “Please treat the six African American saintly candidates fairly by redefining and correcting the process. Please canonize them immediately. If not now, then when? Who if not you?
Six candidates for canonization as the first African American saint
Pierre Toussaint (1766–1853)
Status: Honorable
Toussaint was a Haitian-American barber, philanthropist, and former slave brought to New York by his owners in 1787 and freed in 1807 after the death of his mistress. He has been called the father of Catholic charities in New York for funding the first Catholic orphanage, opening the city’s first school for black children, and donating money and resources to the creation of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. He was declared “venerable” by Pope John Paul II in 1996 and became the first lay person to be buried in a crypt under the main altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Henriette Delille (1813–1862)
Status: Honorable
Delille was born in 1812 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She founded the Catholic Order of the Sisters of the Holy Family, made up of free women of color in New Orleans. The Order provided nursing and orphanage, and also played a role in establishing schools. Great-great-grandmother Delille was brought from Africa as a slave and became a free woman after the death of her master. She ransomed her daughter and two grandchildren from slavery, as required by Spanish law in Louisiana at the time.
August Tolton (1854–1897)
Status: Honorable
Tolton, born John Augustine Tolton in Brush Creek, Missouri, is considered the first African American to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1886. His father escaped slavery to join the Union Army and was subsequently killed in action. After the war, his mother fled with him and his siblings, assisted by a handful of Union soldiers, and joined the Catholic Church in Quincy, Illinois.
Julia Greely (1840–1918)
Status: Servant of God
Born into slavery in Missouri, Greeley moved to Denver around 1880, where he became a Catholic. She was free by 1865, when Missouri, not subject to President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, passed its own Emancipation Proclamation. Even though she was poor, she devoted her life to charity and donated the money she earned working for wealthy white families. She has been known to haul a red van around Denver to deliver food, coal, clothes, and groceries to needy families. She was known as the “Angel of Mercy of Denver”.
Mother Maria Lange (1789–1882)
Status: Servant of God
Lange founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African American religious community, and was also, through the Oblates, the first ever African American Mother Superior. She helped care for the sick during a cholera epidemic in the early 1830s. When Sister Frances died, she took her place as a servant at St. Mary’s Seminary, and from 1850 to 1860 she was a novice of the nascent Order of the Oblates.
Thea Bowman (1937–1990)
Status: Servant of God
Bowman is the most recent candidate and the only one born in the 20th century. She was raised as a Protestant until she asked her parents if she could become a Catholic when she was nine years old. She taught for 16 years in elementary, middle and university classes before being invited by the Bishop of Jackson, Mississippi to become an intercultural consultant. She gave presentations throughout the country using singing, preaching the gospel, prayer, and storytelling. She also helped found the National Conference of Black Sisters to provide support for African American women in Catholic religious institutions.