CatholicTV debuts series on six Black American Catholics in sainthood causes

Six African American Catholics with ongoing sainthood causes in the United States will be the focus of a new documentary series launching on November 2. The half-hour episodes, titled “Black Catholics: Footsteps to Sainthood,” air on the Archdiocese of Boston’s CatholicTV network during Black Catholic History Month.

The first episode centers on Father Augustus (Augustine) Tolton, the first publicly recognized African American priest in the United States. The production uses live acting and artificial intelligence to depict his life. Tolton served at Black Catholic parishes in Chicago for more than a decade before dying of heatstroke in 1897 at age 43.

Producers hosted a media preview in Chicago, where Tolton had ministered. Retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago, who serves as postulator for Tolton’s cause, led the event with a prayer he wrote for the priest. Bishop Perry told OSV News that Tolton’s narrative resonates because it features a person who overcame great odds and suffering.

Ansel Augustine, assistant director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, hosts the series. He noted that the subjects include four venerables and two servants of God whose causes originated in the U.S. These individuals are Mother Henriette Delille, Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, Pierre Toussaint, Sister Thea Bowman, and Julia Greeley. A seventh figure, Friar Martin de Porres Maria Ward, is also on the sainthood track, though his cause began in Brazil.

The series highlights the specific contributions of each figure. Mother Delille founded her own order in 1842 after no congregation would accept a Black woman. Pierre Toussaint, a hairdresser in New York, is the only lay Catholic buried at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Julia Greeley, who was blind in one eye from a slave whipping, entered the Catholic Church in 1880 and served poor families in Denver.

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange established the first Catholic religious order for women of African descent in the U.S. in 1829. Sister Thea Bowman, born in 1937, joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and became known for her work in charity and inclusivity. Augustine stated that these individuals used their gifts to make society a better place despite the realities of slavery and segregation.

Augustine said the series aims to show that these imperfect people promoted perfect love. He emphasized that the stories are not just Black Catholic narratives but are central to the history of the universal Church in America.