Venerable Fr. Tolton, Missouri native, arrived in Chicago 135 years ago
Grave disappointments gave way to great success
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The soft-spoken cleric felt a combination of weariness and relief as the train pulled into the station.
Father Augustus Tolton, formerly enslaved, formerly deprived of his priestly aspirations, formerly ostracized in the land of his upbringing for being too effective in his ministry, had finally arrived in a new mission field.
It was Dec. 19, 1889 — 135 years ago this week — the day Venerable Fr. Tolton, a Missouri native, first recognizably Black Catholic priest in the United States and current candidate for being declared a saint, arrived in Chicago and began the final and most fruitful phase of his ministry.
“Christmas must have been very subdued for him that year — away from his mom and sisters, away from his former parish, the feeling of having been pushed out,” stated Bishop Joseph N. Perry, retired auxiliary bishop of Chicago and co-postulator for Venerable Fr. Tolton’s sainthood cause.
“It had to be so overwhelming for him,” Bishop Perry surmised. “It was hard for him to grasp. His (former) bishop and particularly neighboring priests wanted him out of town.”
Yet, he had good reason to hope for something better.
“It was the graciousness of a southern gentleman named Archbishop Feehan who invited him to help this fledgling group of Black Catholics worshiping in a basement of a church in downtown Chicago,” said Bishop Perry, who himself is Black and a descendant of slaves.
Archbishop Patrick Augustine Feehan led the Chicago archdiocese from 1880 until his death in 1902. He previously served as bishop of Nashville, Tennessee, and before that as an influential priest of the St. Louis archdiocese.
The Sunday after Fr. Tolton’s arrival found him offering Mass for about 30 Black Catholics from all over the city in a subterranean space accessible from a side door into St. Mary Church.
“He cultivated that community very well, and before he knew it, there were 600 people,” Bishop Perry noted. “That inspired the archbishop to build a parish for Black Catholics.
“That’s how it all started here,” Bishop Perry said with delight.
The late 19th century was a time of unprecedented immigration to this country, and large cities often had separate churches for people from different nationalities, to help them hold onto their faith and their identity.
“Every ethnic group had their own parish, with priests who spoke their own language,” Bishop Perry noted.
“How long, O Lord?”
Fr. Tolton, born in 1854 into a family of enslaved people in part of what is now the Jefferson City diocese, was baptized Catholic in the old log church where the stone St. Peter Church in Brush Creek now stands.
His father joined the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War, and the rest of the family made a daring escape across the Mississippi River into Illinois, a free state, soon thereafter.
His mother, Martha Jane Tolton, continued to form her children in the faith after her husband died in the war.
The teachers at St. Peter School in Quincy, Illinois, helped young “Gus” catch up on his studies in religion and secular subjects.
Over time, he recognized and relentlessly pursued his priestly calling, despite that no Catholic seminary in this country at that time would enroll a Black man.
With help from priests, religious sisters and brothers and other friends in Quincy, he was eventually accepted into the Pontifical Urbanum Seminary of the Vatican department of The Propagation of the Faith.
With seminarians from all over the world, the Urbanum prepared young men for missionary outposts throughout the globe.
Fr. Tolton studied there for six years and was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1886.
The cardinal prefect of the Propagation of the Faith sent the new priest back to Quincy to serve as a missionary in the place where he had grown up and ministered as a lay catechist.
Thus, Fr. Tolton became the Roman Catholic Church’s first recognizably Black priest in the United States.
Things went very well for him at first.
As pastor of the St. Joseph Parish, established for Black Catholics in Quincy, he became a diligent and respected spiritual leader, as well as a novelty and a celebrity among the people.
White Catholics began attending the parish, to the consternation of their pastors and their bishop.
Most of the priests who had helped Fr. Tolton while he was growing up and discerning Priesthood had moved on to other assignments, although Father Peter McGirr, one of his staunchest allies, remained.
Issues of race and professional jealousy drove a wedge between Fr. Tolton and several other priests, making it increasingly difficult for him to carry out his priestly ministry in Quincy, although he loved the people dearly.
He wrote to Archbishop Feehan, who contacted Fr. Tolton’s superiors in Rome, asking for him to be sent to Chicago.
“Fr. Tolton had to go to great lengths to convince Rome to reassign him,” Bishop Perry noted.
When the orders finally came, Fr. Tolton left Quincy abruptly.
“He only told his mother, Martha Jane, and his sister, Anne, that he was leaving, and the next thing you know, he’s hopping on a train to come to Chicago,” said Bishop Perry.
“I think things finally came to such a boiling point, he either did not have time or felt that he could not emotionally say goodbye to the people he had nurtured in his pastoral care at St. Joseph in Quincy,” he said.
Light in the darkness
Fr. Tolton got to work in Chicago as quickly as he had left Quincy and Brush Creek.
It was the last week of Advent.
“He celebrated Christmas that year with his new family of 30-some people in the church basement at Ninth and Wabash,” said Bishop Perry.
As Fr. Tolton had done so many times in the past, he again placed himself completely in in God’s hands.
“Fr. Tolton, by reason of his own religiosity, trusted in God, and that trust had taken him this far,” said Bishop Perry.
“This was to be a blip in the whole adventure — a significant blip, mind you — but the Lord was carving something new for him, in which he could begin to blossom as a priest in his own right,” the bishop stated.
Fr. Tolton stayed in contact with Archbishop Feehan and by letters to Sister (now Saint) Katherine Drexel, foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Philadelphia, and Josephite Father James Flaherty in Baltimore.
“He leaned on them for friendship,” Bishop Perry noted.
He also revered his parishioners and fellow priests.
“His dossier indicates he was warmly accepted by the clergy here,” said Bishop Perry. “And we know how well he was loved by the number of people who turned out for his funeral. He was really appreciated.”
During Fr. Tolton’s time in Chicago, he and early civil-rights leader Daniel Rudd helped establish the National Black Catholic Congress, which was at first known as the Colored Catholic Congress.
The organization’s first gathering was in 1889 in Washington, D.C.
“Fr. Tolton was thoroughly convinced that the Catholic Church was the best thing going at that time for helping Black people,” said Bishop Perry.
Fr. Tolton could see that no other force in American society at that time had both the resources and the spiritual mandate to help Black people overcome the lingering effects of slavery and ongoing discrimination.
He ministered intensely, guarding the souls of his parishioners and helping with their material needs in any way he could.
Exhausted, he died of heatstroke while walking back to his rectory on June 9, 1897, at age 43.
His earthly remains were buried in St. Peter Cemetery in Quincy, in keeping with his wishes.
His would not be classified as a martyr’s death, but if the people in his care were not so acutely marginalized, he likely would have lived and ministered to a ripe old age.
Friends might have been introducing him into the 1930s or ’40s as “Old Father Gus.”
As it was, he was largely forgotten by that time, until the publication of From Slavery to Priest: A Biography of the Reverend Augustine Tolton, by Franciscan Sister Caroline Hemesath, in 1973.
“That proved to be an opening,” said Bishop Perry.
Interest in Fr. Tolton’s story spread, and prayers for his intercession vastly increased.
The Chicago archdiocese opened an official sainthood cause for him in 2010.
Upon review of the extensively researched “position on the virtues” document submitted to the Church’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis concluded in 2018 that Fr. Tolton had exhibited heroic virtue throughout his life and at the time of his death, and declared him venerable.
Signs and favors attributed to God through Fr. Tolton’s intercession continue to be reported and investigated.
Many people seeking help from near God’s throne in heaven turn to the kindhearted priest whose skin was nearly as dark as his clerical garb.
Tell it on the mountain
Bishop Perry believes Catholics today can learn a great deal from how Fr. Tolton handled his travails and transitions.
“When you consider the kind of world we live in and the society we live in, he teaches us how to handle disappointment,” said Bishop Perry.
“And not just simply disappointment, mind you, but protracted disappointment, when most of life comes to you with the word ‘no,’ not ‘yes,’” he stated.
Fr. Tolton could have left the Priesthood and left the Church.
“But ... I think his faith in God really was his resource,” said Bishop Perry. “And he turned out to be a stalwart priest. I think he models for us how to live the Christian faith in times of absolute nonsense.”
Fr. Tolton’s was one of countless versions of a story that has been telling itself through the ages of Christianity.
“We went from having an empire try to drown us in our own blood, to all kinds of persecution and denunciation, and one thing after another, and somehow, we’re still here,” said Bishop Perry.
“We have before us the model of the saints who helped us do that,” he said. “I think Fr. Tolton is one of them.”
When asked what Catholics should take to God while thinking of Fr. Tolton’s arrival in Chicago, Bishop Perry offered a spontaneous prayer:
“Lord, my life is in your hands!” he prayed. “And I see from time to time, I see a cross in my life, but I accept it as a blessing, an opportunity to come to know your sacrifice on our behalf.
“I hope to make this sacrifice something that you can use, O Lord, for somebody else.”
