You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts.

Today is Tuesday, December 1st, 2020.

This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are talking about great black Catholics,

venerables, blessed, and saints who had dark skin, who looked like black people today.

And we are reminded that no matter what you look like, where you grew up, the color of your skin,

the color of your hair, the color of your eyes, God is calling you to be a saint.

And the great congregation of saints in heaven with Jesus Christ is every color of skin imaginable. There is a saint that looks like you in heaven. So yesterday we

talked about venerable Augustus Tolton, the first black priest in the United States, also known as

Good Father Gus. Today we are going to talk about another venerable, venerable Henriette

DeLeel. Now, venerable Henriette, now she also was African. She was the great descendant of slaves. However, she herself was not a slave.

She was a freed woman of color. And she lived and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Now, even though she was a free woman, Unriette did not live in a very free world. Her mother and her sisters, also free women of

color, they didn't have very many options. They could either live a life of poverty if they married

another person of color, or they could try to be financially secure and live a comfortable life

if they allowed a wealthy white man to simply use them. The wealthy white man would have a family

of their own, but they would keep them on the side as well. It was basically another form of

slavery and dependence. It was a whole system in

Louisiana where women of color were used. Now, Venerable Henriette grew up in this culture. Her mother

existed in this culture, but she grew very close to Jesus Christ, and she realized that, first of all,

this was against marriage. It was against the dignity that she was born with. And also,

she desired to give her whole self to Jesus Christ entirely as a religious.

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