Ven. Father Augustus Tolton, First Black Priest in America

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

Father Augustus Tolton was the first black priest in America who identified as black. He was born a slave in Missouri in 1854, but his mother escaped with him and his two siblings to freedom in Illinois after the Civil War began. He endured racism among the children and parents at two schools, but also experienced great acceptance and love from the priests of his parishes and the nuns at the school. One of the priests, the Irishman Father Peter McGirr, took a special interest in "Gus," as he was known, and made sure he received a good education. Eventually, Father McGirr recognized the possibility that Gus had a vocation to the priesthood. After a few false starts, Father McGirr and the local Franciscan superior got Gus into the seminary of the Propaganda Fidei in Rome. Gus excelled as a seminarian in the Eternal City, and expected to be sent to Africa as a missionary. But the day before his ordination he found out he'd be returning to the U.S. He came back in 1887 and served as a beloved pastor in his home town of Quincy, Illinois, until a change in the local Church leadership made life very difficult for him, and he was transferred to the Archdiocese of Chicago. There he was once again a beloved pastor until his untimely death in 1896. In 2019 Father Augustus Tolton was declared Venerable by Pope Francis.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.
0:11.0	If you like this podcast and would like to support our work, please visit American Catholic
0:16.0	History.org slash support. I'm Noelle Heister Crow. And I'm Tom Crow.
0:21.6	Today we're talking about the first black identifying priest in American history, Father
0:27.6	Augustus Tolton. Father Tolton endured a significant amount of mistreatment and abuse because of
0:34.0	his black skin, but he brought grace and peace and strength to his flock.
0:39.3	One important note is a clarification about how you introduced Father Tolton. He was the first
0:44.2	black identifying priest, but he wasn't the first priest in American history with black ancestry.
0:50.8	No, the three Healy brothers who became priest had a mixed-race mother and a white
0:55.9	father, so they were, I think about one-quarter black. They were very light-skinned and
1:02.2	identified as white. But Father Gus, as Father Gustus Tolton was called, was the son of two
1:08.1	dark-skinned black parents, so he also had dark skin. Thus, when he came back
1:13.1	from Rome as a duly ordained priest, he was clearly the first black identifying priest in the U.S.
1:19.5	Yeah, and that's a really intriguing point that he studied in Rome. Yeah, it is an interesting point. It's the reason, yeah, and the reason
1:29.8	it's intriguing is because it harkens back to what we talked about with the great sculptor Mary
1:34.0	Edmonia Lewis. She was black and was forced to leave the U.S. and move to Rome to find a place
1:39.7	where her skin color didn't matter. We talked about her in episode 84. Everyone should listen to her story after
1:45.9	this one. With Augustus Tolton, the problem was that no U.S. seminary would accept a black student.
1:53.0	That's pretty tragic in itself, frankly, but them's were the times. They claimed basically
1:57.8	that the church in America wasn't ready for a black priest.
2:06.6	Fortunately, a Cardinal in Rome thought otherwise, but we'll get to that detail later.
2:10.4	First, let's talk about Augustus Tolton's early life.
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