APRIL – FATHER AUGUSTUS TOLTON MONTH 2024: 138th Anniversary of Ven. Tolton’s Ordination to the Priesthood.
“America has been called the most enlightened nation in the world. We shall see whether it deserves that honor. If the United States has never before seen a black priest, it must see one now.”
– Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni announcing to the committee deciding where Tolton would be sent in the world after ordination. The Cardinal overruled the previous decision to send him to Africa.
On this day Ven. Augustus Tolton was ordained a priest in Rome, Italy at St. John Lateran on April 24, 1886.
From the moment of his ordination, this is what Tolton being ordained taught us especially after his fight just to become a priest after being rejected from all US seminaries because of his race:
“Fr. Augustus Tolton was a true priest of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church, and there was not a thing any detractor could have said about it. He was as much of an alter Christus as a White priest was. He could confect the same Eucharist, forgive the same sins, witness the same marriages, baptize the same babies, and anoint the same sick all not due to his race but rather to the sacrament he received. When he performed his duties he did them in the Person of Christ not in the person of a Black or White man, for the One Priesthood he was ordained into is not a respecter of race. All of this would be true for any other Black man ordained after him.” – From an article I wrote for uCatholic a while back.
Artist: Patrice Schelkun. Art and artist’s explanation of the it found here.
And in 2022 I was able to visit and stand in the same place Tolton would have been ordained at in St. John Lateran in Rome!
Image of painting used under Fair Use.
Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, pray for us!