Augustus Tolton

Venerable Augustus Tolton
Augustus Tolton, c. 1897
Born	John Augustus Tolton (1854-04-01)April 1, 1854 Ralls County, Missouri, U.S.
Died	July 9, 1897(1897-07-09) (aged 43) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

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John Augustus Tolton (baptized Augustine; April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897) was an African American who served as first openly Black Catholic priest in the United States, ordained in Rome in 1886. He was preceded by the Healy brothers, Catholic priests who passed as White.^[1][2]

Born into slavery in Missouri, Tolton and his family escaped in 1863 and settled in Quincy, Illinois. Despite being very well-educated, multilingual, and fully supported by local Irish- and German-American priests and by Bishop Peter Joseph Baltes, all of whom believed in his priestly vocation, Tolton was rejected by every North American major seminary to which he applied, as well as by the Mill Hill Missionaries in London. Unmoved, the bishop arranged for his reception into the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, where Tolton was ordained in 1886. Originally expecting to serve as a missionary in Africa, Tolton was instead reassigned by Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni to the United States as a missionary to his fellow African Americans.

Catholic activist Daniel Rudd, who later organized the first Colored Catholic Congress, was quoted in the November 8, 1888 The Irish Canadian as saying, "For a long time the idea prevailed that the negro was not wanted beyond the altar rail, and for that reason, no doubt, hundreds of young colored men who would otherwise be officiating at the altar rail today have entered other walks. Now that this mistaken idea has been dispelled by the advent of one full-blooded negro priest, the Rev. Augustus Tolton, many more have entered the seminaries in this country and Europe."^[3]

Assigned to the Diocese of Alton Tolton first ministered at his home parish in Quincy, despite considerable opposition from both the German-American dean of the parish and local African-American Protestant ministers. Reassigned at his own request to the Archdiocese of Chicago, Tolton, in a highly important move for African-American Catholicism, spearheaded the development and construction of St. Monica's Church as an African-American "national parish" on Chicago's South Side.

According to a 1893 article in the Lewiston Daily Sun, "Father Tolton ... is a fluent and graceful talker and has a singing voice of exceptional sweetness, which shows to good advantage in the chants of the high mass. It is no unusual thing for many white people to be seen among his congregation."^[4]

With the assistance of philanthropist Katharine Drexel, St Monica's was completed in 1893 at 36th and Dearborn Streets. "Good Father Gus", as he was called by his parishioners, often played the concertina and sang German folk music in the German language during parish dances. He died unexpectedly, however, of a heat stroke contracted during the 1897 Chicago heatwave. At the time of his death, Tolton was only 43 years old.

Tolton's cause for beatification was opened by Cardinal Francis George in 2010.^[5] Tolton was declared venerable by Pope Francis in June 2019.