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Causes for Canonization

Did you know that there are currently four people of color whose causes for canonization have been presented to Rome? They are Venerable Henriette Delille, Fr. Augustus Tolton, Mother Mary Lange, and Venerable Pierre Toussaint. Click on the link below for a brief bio on each of these remarkable people.

Here are the steps that must be followed in the process of canonization:

A local bishop investigates the candidate's life and writings for evidence of heroic virtue. The information uncovered by the bishop is sent to the Vatican.
A panel of theologians and the cardinals of the Congregation for Cause of Saints evaluate the candidate's life.
If the panel approves, the pope proclaims that the candidate is venerable, which means that the person is a role model of Catholic virtues.
The next step toward sainthood is beatification, which allows a person to be honored by a particular group or region. In order to beatify a candidate, it must be shown that the person is responsible for a posthumous miracle. Martyrs -- those who died for their religious cause -- can be beatified without evidence of a miracle. Once beatified, the person is known as Blessed.
In order for the candidate to be considered a saint, there must be proof of a second posthumous miracle. If there is, the person is canonized.

These alleged miracles must be submitted to the Vatican for verification.

Once a person is a saint, he or she is recommended to the entire Catholic Church for veneration. Some saints are selected as patron saints, special protectors or guardians over particular occupations, illnesses, churches, countries or causes.

Venerable Henriette DeLille

http://www.sistersoftheholyfamily.com/AboutHenrietteDelille.html

Henriette Delille is regarded as a honor to her race and a strong member of the Catholic Church, especially in New Orleans. She was a woman of strong determination, kindness, compassion, generosity, faith and deep love of God.
Henriette Delille, Julietta Gaudin, and Josephine Charles, free women of color, wanted to be religious but legal and social restraints twenty years before the abolition of slavery and the Civil War prevented local communities from accepting them.
The reply to their request to for their own community from Church officials was permission to form a pious society that took no vows and whose members were free to withdraw as they wished.
Marie-Jeanne Aliquot, a French immigrant, sympathized with their cause and assisted them all she could with financial and moral support.
Bishop Antoine Blanc acceded to the request of Abbe Etienne Rousselon, Vicar-General and pastor of St. Augustine Church to direct them in their pursuit.
Henriette and her friends had the courage to pray and to live as Jesus and His apostles had they knew will that although they, as free people of color, lived in a relatively easy life compared to the people held in slavery, that Christ would have sought the poor, the sick, the elderly and helpless, the lonely, the uninstructed who needed care.
They trusted in God and they grew and grew, until today many hundreds of young women have consecrated themselves to God's service as Sisters of the Holy Family.
Henriette was chosen the leader, and she continuously encouraged her fellow members that like them in their new life endure and He had endured.
In 1862 when Henriette died the community had the fatherly protection of Bishop and his representatives.
For 168 years, the Sisters of the Holy Family, in the spirit of their foundresses and early predecessors, have continued to serve the youth, the elderly, and the needy members of society.
The Sisters have not only served the New Orleans community, but also many people throughout cities in Louisiana; Texas, California, in Washington, D.C., Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, Belize, and Panama Central America; and Benin City, Nigeria, Africa. Of course this has changed in recent times.

Fr. Augustus Tolton

http://www.toltoncanonization.org/

Augustus Tolton was born on April 1, 1854, from Ralls County, Missouri, he was the son of Peter Paul and Martha Jane Tolton.
As the Civil War began in 1861, his father escaped slavery, joined the Union Army to fight, and was killed.
His mother collected her children and walked to freedom by crossing the Mississippi River, eventually reaching Quincy, Illinois. Prior to their escape, the Tolton family was baptized and after getting to Illinois, they became members of the Roman Catholic Church.
He was enrolled in St. Peter’s School, where he began to wish to serve the Lord more deeply by becoming a priest.
The American Catholic Church did not allow Black men to be admitted to studies in United States seminaries. His parish priests began to tutor Augustus themselves.
In 1878, he was admitted to Franciscan College at Quincy, Illinois as a special student.
In 1880 the efforts of his parish priests were met with success and Augustus left for the Propaganda College in Rome to prepare for priesthood.
Fr. Augustus Tolton was ordained on April 24, 1886, as the first known and recognized Black priest in the United States of America.
Returning to the United States, he ministered for two years as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Quincy, Illinois. He quickly gained a reputation as a fine preacher, so much so that many of the German and Irish Catholics began to attend Mass with the Black Catholics!
His enemies referred to his church as “that nigger church”, and to him as ‘the nigger priest”. The extent of the persecution Tolton received especially from the other Catholic pastor in Quincy (Fr. Weiss) led to his transfer from Quincy to Chicago.
In the Windy City, Tolton ministered in a Southside church basement that was known as St. Augustine’s and later became St. Monica’s Church.
Parishioners eventually found him an apartment into which his mother and sister also moved.
Tolton, who had been given jurisdiction of all Blacks in Chicago had become the first Black pastor in that city.
St. Monica’s became the Chicago’s center of Black Catholic life for more than 30 years.
Tolton continued to be well known there and nationally, speaking at numerous gatherings and lectures, including the 1st Catholic Colored Congress in Washington DC in 1889.
On an excessively hot Friday, July 9, 1897 as he stepped from the train at 35th Street and Lake Park, he was stricken by a heat related stroke and rushed to Mercy Hospital.
He died that night at the age of 43.

Mother Mary Lange

http://www.motherlange.org/

Elizabeth Lange was born in 1784 in Haiti, an island the Caribbean. Her parents fled Haiti during a revolution and went to Cuba, where Lange received her education. She came to Baltimore in 1813 and settled in Fells Point. Baltimore had a large population of French-speaking Caribbean Catholics. Lange, a well-educated free black woman in a slave-holding state, also had money from her merchant father. She saw a need in educating children of Caribbean immigrants and slaves, a practice which was illegal at that time.

Lange used her money and set up a school in her home with her friend, Marie Magdaleine Balas. They offered a free education, but after 10 years finances became a problem. Rev. James Hector Joubert, a Sulpician with the backing of the Archbishop of Baltimore Monsignor James Whitfield, came to the rescue. Joubert presented Lange with a challenge to found a religious congregation for the education of black children. Joubert would provide direction, solicit financial assistance and encourage other women of color to become members of the first order of African-American nuns in the history of the Catholic Church. On July 2, 1829, Lange and three other women pronounced promises of obedience to the Archbishop and the chosen superior.

Lange, the founder and first superior of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, took the name Mary. The Oblate sisters educated youths and provided homes for orphans. They nursed the sick and dying and sheltered the elderly.

Mother Mary Lange's deep faith enabled her to persevere against all odds. Lange was a woman of vision and selfless commitment. She personally took action to meet the social, religious and educational needs of poor women and children. Their ministry is particularly felt in Baltimore at the St. Frances Academy.

Mother Mary Lange died Feb. 3, 1882. Cardinal William H. Keeler and the Oblate Sisters have campaigned for her canonization and the Vatican has this under study.

Venerable Pierre Toussaint

http://www.obmny.org/VenerablePT.htm

Pierre Toussaint was born into slavery on the French colony of Saint Domingue. His master, Jean Berard, encouraged the young Pierre to learn to read and write. In 1787, Berard moved his new wife and several slaves, including Pierre and his younger sister Rosalie, to New York City.

As Pierre was establishing a good reputation among New York's elite as a hairdresser, an increasing number of Haitian refugees in the American city brought reports of murder and devastation from the island. With the money he had received from the women whose hair he cut, Pierre bought his sister's freedom. He selflessly decided to remain a slave, however, thinking he could better care for the recently widowed Madame Berard, in that capacity.

Eventually, Madame Berard's health gave way. Then, on her deathbed she granted Pierre his freedom. At the age of forty-one, Pierre was a free man. It was as a free man that he married the woman he loved, Juliette Noel, whose freedom he had purchased. Like Pierre Tourrsaint, Juliette had begun her life in the “New World” as a slave in Haiti. Together, they continued charitable work Pierre had begun informally, helping refugees find jobs and caring for orphans. Next, the couple opened a school to teach black children a trade. When the plague struck New York, Pierre personally cared for the victims. When Pierre's sister, Rosalie, died leaving an orphaned young daughter, Euphemia, Pierre and Juliette welcomed her into their home.

In 1851, Pierre who was eighty-five, suffered the last and greatest sorrow of his life when his beloved Juliette died. He died two years later on June 30, 1853, and was buried in a New York cemetary next to Juliette and Euphemia.

In 1968, the long process to canonize Pierre Toussaint as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church began. In 1990, his body was moved to a crypt under the main altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. In view of his lifelong commitment to helping others, Pierre Toussaint is credited as a founder of Catholic charitable works in the United States.