Born a slave, to be a shepherd

Harold Burke-Sivers was in seventh grade, preparing for his Confirmation, when he
went to a library to look for anything he could find about Black Catholic saints.

“I thought, ‘There have to be some black saints somewhere.’ My mother told me, ‘Well, go find out,’” said Burke-Sivers, whose family was one of the few black households in his Hillside, New Jersey parish.

With help from the library’s card catalogue, the future deacon came across a book, From Slave to Priest, a biography of Father Augustus Tolton written by the late Sister Caroline Hemesath. The cover photo was of Father Tolton, the first black Catholic priest in the United States.

“I thought, ‘Who is this guy?’” Burke-Sivers said. “He wasn’t canonized, so obviously I couldn’t use him as a saint. But it at least introduced me to him.”

Overcoming early obstacles

In recent years, more people in the United States and across the world have discovered the dramatic life story of Father Tolton. Born a slave on a Missouri farm in 1854, he then escaped with his family across the Mississippi River to Illinois, where he experienced intense racism that made it difficult for him to pursue a vocation to the priesthood.

“In those days, the Church ran parallel with the institutions of society that would not receive blacks,” said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry of Chicago, the postulator of Father Tolton’s cause for canonization.

Father Tolton overcame the obstacles and was ordained a priest in Rome on Holy Saturday, April 24, 1886. Throughout his life and his 11 years of priesthood until his death at age 43, Father Tolton confronted the racial prejudice of his day with Christian charity.

“He was a fighter and a hero. But he wasn’t a fighter in the sense that the world thinks of it. He was a fighter in the sense of how a Catholic saint would be,” said Chris Foley, a Nashville filmmaker who wrote and directed “Across,” a short film about the Tolton family’s escape from slavery, to be released in December.

Foley, who hopes to produce “Across” into a full-length feature film, said he “fell in love right away” with Father Tolton’s story.

“He didn’t return hatred for hatred. He returned love against hatred,” Foley said. “Even though he stood up for himself, he had a great humility about him. To him, it was much more important to reach the souls of those people than anything else.”

A life illustrating great lessons

Father Tolton’s life contains many important lessons about Christian nonviolence, overcoming evil with good, and choosing love over hate. His example and personal holiness are quite timely amid the racial unrest that has convulsed the United States this year since a white Minneapolis police officer was filmed kneeling on the neck of George Floyd back in May.

“He didn’t respond with anger or animosity, like we’re seeing today with all the rioting and the looting,” said Deacon Burke-Sivers, the author of Father Augustus Tolton: The Slave Who Became the First African-American Priest. In the book, Deacon Burke-Sivers reflects on Father Tolton’s life through the themes of prayer, joy, God’s mercy, forgiveness, fortitude, and family.

“He tried to open doors of dialogue and understanding,” Deacon Burke-Sivers said. “After he became a priest, he actually tried to sit down with those priests who were badmouthing him behind his back. He wanted to understand why they were treating him like that.”

Said Deacon Burke-Sivers, “He worked hard to break down those walls and those barriers that were standing between his ability to effectively minister to his people and to still have love and fraternity for his brother priests.”

Civil War years

Born into slavery on Aug. 1, 1854, Father Tolton and his two siblings were baptized as infants. The Tolton family were the chattel property of a Catholic slave-owning family that had moved from Kentucky to Brush Creek, Missouri in 1849. National tensions related to slavery grew to a fever pitch in the years before the Civil War erupted in 1861.

“For our young nation, that was the pivotal moment when we had to rid our original sin, which was slavery, in order to become a complete nation,” said Foley, whose “Baptism in Blood” thesis at Christendom College focused on how slavery led to the Civil War.

“Just seeing this heroic man who suffered under slavery, escaped from it during the Civil War, and then just learning more about his personality, just really caught my imagination,” Foley said.

In 1862, Tolton was seven, his brother, Charley, eight years old and their sister, Anne, only 20 months old when their mother, Martha, risked it all. She and the children escaped the plantation and traveled more than 40 miles, day and night. They were nearly captured, but Union soldiers in Hannibal, Missouri prevented Confederate officials from apprehending them.

Martha rowed her children in a small boat across the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois, where they settled in Quincy. In “Across,” Foley filmed near the spot along the Mississippi River where Martha Tolton and her children would have crossed into Illinois.

“Just bringing his story to light, I think, has inspired a lot of people because everybody has these crosses in their life,” Foley said. “People love his perseverance, and they love his happy energy and his gentleness.”

Finding his way – from Illinois to Rome

Growing up in Quincy, Illinois, young Augustus Tolton did not have the same educational and religious formation opportunities as his white peers. He did not receive his First Holy Communion until he was a teenager.

“But even back then he had a very strong devotion to the Eucharist,” Deacon Burke- Sivers said. “He had a love for Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. In fact, it was actually before the Blessed Sacrament that he first thought of becoming a priest.”

Franciscan priests in Quincy encouraged young Augustus to discern the priesthood, but no seminary in the United States would accept him. He went on to study for the priesthood in Rome, where he was ordained on Easter Sunday, 1866.

“His experience in Rome turned out to be dramatically different from anything he experienced here in the United States,” Bishop Perry said.

Father Tolton had hoped to be sent to a mission field in Africa, but he was told the day before his ordination that he would be sent back to Quincy, where he was immediately “a breath of fresh air.”

“People gravitated towards him because of his preaching ability, his gentle pastoral touch, and his welcoming spirit that somehow neutralized the barriers that were set up in those days,” Bishop Perry said, adding that enthusiastic white Catholics were attending his Masses.

Spurned by clergy – loved by flock

His early success led to resentment among the white Protestant and Catholic clergy, which resulted in Father Tolton being transferred to Chicago, where he spearheaded the building of St. Monica Church, a parish for black Catholics.

Father Tolton worked tirelessly for his flock. In 1897, while ministering to parishioners, he died of complications from a heat stroke. He was only 43. More than 120 years since his death, devotion to Father Tolton has grown among black Catholics and many others. In June 2019, Pope Francis declared him Venerable. Bishop Perry said the Vatican is examining a potential miracle for his beatification. If canonized, Father Tolton would be the first American-born black saint.

“What made him a saint, I think, was the Christian way in which he somehow navigated the choppy waters of racial acceptance in our country and in the Church,” Bishop Perry said. “Somehow, he came out the other end of it with his faith, hope, and love intact when he could have given up.”

BRIAN FRAGA is a Legatus Magazine staff writer.