Legacy of U.S. black Catholic priest honored

Published: 2004-05-14

MONROE CITY, Mo. (CNS) -- Catholic pilgrims and parishioners gathered at Holy Rosary Church in Monroe City April 24 to celebrate the memory of Father Augustine Tolton, the first full-blooded African-American to be ordained a Catholic priest. Born in a Catholic slave family in Missouri in 1854 and baptized at the old St. Peter Church in Brush Creek, Father Tolton entered the seminary and went on to be ordained despite "insufferable obstacles," said Jesuit Father J-Glenn Murray, homilist at a Mass celebrating the 150th anniversary of the pioneer priest's birth. The sesquicentennial Mass was celebrated on the 118th anniversary of Father Tolton's ordination in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. The mood at the Mass was upbeat but somewhat reflective as worshippers pondered simultaneously Father Tolton's heroic ministry and the tragic circumstances that helped to make it so. The Mass was the high point in a daylong celebration that included tours of the old St. Peter Church in Brush Creek, closed as a parish church in 1969 but undergoing restoration in memory of Father Tolton and all other former parishioners.

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