Making Black Catholic History Today: Black Catholic Interviews 1 – My Interview with Brad Schepisi of Laudare Outreach (Black Catholic History Month 2019)

November 7, 2019 0 By BLACKCATHOLIC

Featured Black Catholic Interviews for Black Catholic History Month 2019:
On Thursdays this month I will feature interviews with Black Catholics to showcase how Black Catholic history is being made by the lives of those living today. I have had the idea for this kind of thing in my head for a while, but this will be a sort of test case for a new article-series featuring interviews with Black Catholics that I would like to start in the future (near or distant). It will be a test for me to see how well I can make this type of content and a test of the content itself to see if it goes over well. So I would definitely appreciate your feedback on this one if you would like to see more of these type of interviews in the future.

The first Black Catholic interview I am featuring is one that I actually took part in last year right before I went off to seminary when I was interviewed about my own experience and journey as a Black Catholic. I sat down with one of my dear friends and fellow worker in Catholic ministry Brad Schepisi. He heads up Laudare Outreach, which does a number of different forms on online outreach in the mediums of video, social media, and blogging. Brad runs an extension of Laudare featuring his own Catholic commentary on various topics touching upon the faith and the Church. The main outlet he uses for this is his self-tilted YouTube channel where he releases his video commentaries. I have worked with Laudare for years now.

In the interview we talked about a number of things including my apostolate BLACKCATHOLIC, its work, and how it got started. Other questions asked included:

Was it difficult walking into a Catholic church as a minority, most likely being the only African American there for Mass?

How has my journey extended into my apostolate?

If there is an African American watching this video right now and they’re considering joining the Catholic faith but they’re not really sure, what message do you have for them?

It was a lot of fun doing this video with Brad. I also did a couple of other videos for his for his channel about my conversion to the Church, my journey to the seminary, and my reaction to the abuse scandal outbreak last year (often dubbed the “summer of shame”) while the Church was enduring it. Check them out as well. Enjoy the video. Another coming up next Thursday as well.