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In response to the proposal from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) that congregations focus on the dismantling of racism, the Adrian Dominican Sisters began by identifying resources that can assist us in raising our consciousness of white privilege and white supremacy, both personally and systematically.
From January 2021 through June of 2023, our Toward Communion: Undoing Racism and Embracing Diversity Committee and our Justice Promoters collaborated on a project to provide information on prominent Black and Indigenous Catholics who have made significant contributions to the church and society, along with reflection questions and a prayer.
In May of 2022, Kevin D. Hofmann was named the founding Director of Racial Equity and Cultural Inclusion for the Congregation. With the goal of normalizing conversations about race and culture and discussing what it means to feel included and excluded, Kevin began contributing to this blog in June of 2022. He shares his unique experience of growing up Black in a white family in Detroit and educates on topics of equity and inclusion.
Augustus Tolton was the first recognized Black Catholic priest in the United States. He was born in Brush Creek, Missouri, where he began his life “not as a human being, but as someone’s personal property, i.e. as slave of a white Catholic family.” Like many slaves, his mother was baptized because her owners were of the Catholic faith. She raised her son in her Catholic faith.
In 1862 the Tolton family escaped slavery by crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois. They settled in Quincy, Illinois, where Augustus attended St. Peter’s all-white Catholic School. Even though racial conflict haunted Tolton most of his life, he remained devoted to God and the Catholic Church. He felt called to the priesthood; however, because of racism he was not accepted into a seminary in the United States and so he went to Rome and was ordained in 1886.
The Pope returned him to the United States to serve the black community in Quincy, Illinois, and eventually he became a pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church and school. Racial tensions in Quincy led to his reassignment to Chicago, where he started St. Monica’s Catholic parish. Father Tolton’s success at ministering to Black Catholics quickly earned him national attention.
This holy man of God was treated as a commodity – i.e., he was bought and sold. Despite this, because he was gifted by God, he became an accomplished musician, mastered five languages, and through his dedication as pastor and eloquent preacher, brought many to the Catholic faith.
Augustus Tolton embodied our Adrian Dominican charism of contemplative prayer and action as a fruit of contemplation.
Biography of Father Tolton - Father Tolton Catholic High School in Columbia, Missouri
On the Road to Sainthood: Leaders of African Descent - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Father Augustus Tolton (1854-1897) - PDF by the Archdiocese of Chicago
Website on Tolton and steps towards canonization by the Archdiocese of Chicago
Timeline of U.S. Black Catholic History - National Black Catholic Congress
Black Catholic History - Seattle University's Campus Ministry
Video on the people of African decent on the path to sainthood - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
1) When did you first become conscious of your racial identity?
2) When did you first identify the "other" as colored, Negro, Black, African-American, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, or white?
3) What contributions have Blacks and Black Catholics made to the society, culture and church that have benefitted all Catholics worldwide?
God our Father and Mother, we pray together in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Ever present God, you called us to be in relationship with one another and promised to dwell wherever two or three are gathered. In our community, we are many different people; we come from many different places, have many different cultures. Open our hearts that we may be bold in finding the riches of inclusion and the treasures of diversity among us. We pray in faith.*
Glory be to our Father-Mother God and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
Amen!
*Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Jericho Road Homily
Venerable Henriette DeLille, servant of slaves, pray for us!
At a time when chattel slavery objectified and brutalized Black women’s bodies, and Christianity and the Catholic Church were deeply entwined with the system of slavery, Henriette DeLille laid the foundation for a religious congregation of Black women asserting the “sacred meaning and value” of their bodies and lives.
The Adrian Dominican Sisters join our Sisters of the Holy Family in celebrating the 158th anniversary today of their remarkable foundress, the Venerable Henriette DeLille, and in supporting her elevation to sainthood.
Learn more about this amazing woman and her cause for sainthood:
Friends of the Venerable Henriette DeLille - https://henriettedelille.com/canonization-process
See also Dr. M. Shawn Copeland’s “The Subversive Power of Love” (Paulist Press, 2009)
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Black Catholic Project posts
Hofmann's Equity & Inclusion posts
All blog posts
Printable bookmark of African Americans on their Way to Sainthood (PDF)
Black Catholic History page by Seattle University
Timeline from the National Black Catholic Congress
Sister Jamie T. Phelps, OP, discusses Black Catholics in America with Dr. Paul Lakeland for Fairfield University's "Voices of Others" video series
News report on one of the oldest Black Catholic parishes in the U.S., St. Elizabeth Catholic Church (formerly St. Monica) in Chicago, Illinois