Global InformationAugustus Tolton information
Venerable Augustus Tolton | |
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 Augustus Tolton, c. 1897 | |
| Born | John Augustus Tolton April 1, 1854 Ralls County, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | July 9, 1897 (aged 43) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
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John Augustus Tolton (April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897), baptized Augustine Tolton, was the first African-American Catholic priest, other than the Healy brothers, who passed as White.[1][2]
Born into slavery in Missouri, Tolton and his family escaped in 1863 and settled in Quincy, Illinois. Despite being very well-educated, multilingual, and fully supported by local Irish- and German-American priests and by Bishop Peter Joseph Baltes, all of whom believed in his priestly vocation, Tolton was rejected by every North American major seminary to which he applied, as well as by the Mill Hill Missionaries in London. Unmoved, the Bishop arranged for his reception into the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, where Tolton was ordained in 1886. Originally expecting to serve as a missionary in Africa, Fr. Tolton was instead reassigned by Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni to return to the United States as a missionary to his fellow African-Americans.
Catholic activist Daniel Rudd, who later organized the first Colored Catholic Congress, was quoted in the November 8, 1888 The Irish Canadian as saying, "For a long time the idea prevailed that the negro was not wanted beyond the altar rail, and for that reason, no doubt, hundreds of young colored men who would otherwise be officiating at the altar rail today have entered other walks. Now that this mistaken idea has been dispelled by the advent of one full-blooded negro priest, the Rev. Augustus Tolton, many more have entered the seminaries in this country and Europe."[3]
Assigned to the Diocese of Alton, Illinois, Tolton first ministered at his home parish in Quincy, despite considerable opposition from both the German-American Dean of the parish and local African-American Protestant ministers. Reassigned at his own request to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, Tolton, in a highly important move for African-American Roman Catholicism, spearheaded the development and construction of St. Monica's Church as an African-American "national parish" on Chicago's South Side.
According to a 1893 article in the Lewiston Daily Sun, "Father Tolton ... is a fluent and graceful talker and has a singing voice of exceptional sweetness, which shows to good advantage in the chants of the high mass. It is no unusual thing for many white people to be seen among his congregation."[4]
With the assistance of philanthropist Katherine Drexel, St Monica's was completed in 1893 at 36th and Dearborn Streets. "Good Father Gus", as he was called by his parishioners, often played the concertina and sang German folk music in the German language during parish dances. He died unexpectedly, however, of a heat stroke contracted during the 1897 Chicago heatwave. At the time of his death, Fr. Tolton was only 43 years old.
Tolton's cause for Roman Catholic Sainthood was officially introduced by Cardinal Francis George in 2011.[5] Tolton was declared venerable by Pope Francis in June 2019.
- ^ Damayanti, Agnes Mira (July 2019). "Augustine Tolton's Struggle as a Black Catholic against Discrimination as Portrayed in From Slave to Priest by Caroline Hamesath and They Called Him Father Gus by Roy Bauer". Rubikon Journal of Transnational American Studies. 4 (2): 76. doi:10.22146/rubikon.v4i2.47880. S2CID 243293038 – via ResearchGate.
- ^ Davis, Cyprian (1986). "Black Catholics in Nineteenth Century America". U.S. Catholic Historian. 5 (1): 1–17. ISSN 0735-8318. JSTOR 25153741.
- ^ "Colored Catholics". The Irish Canadian. Toronto. November 8, 1888. p. 1. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
DailySunwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Duriga (2018), page xiv.