Blessed Augustus Tolton Poster

He was born a slave in 1854 in Brush Creek, Missouri. His father, Peter Paul Tolton, escaped slavery to join the Union Army (later dying as a soldier), and in the 1860s his mother, Martha Tolton, fled with her two sons and an infant daughter, dodging Confederate bullets and traveling at night. The family eventually crossed the Mississippi River in a rowboat and made their way to Quincy in the free state of Illinois. Tolton’s family had already been baptized Catholic while in Missouri, and Martha tried to find a welcoming church community for her children, but for years Augustus endured ridicule and humiliation in Quincy’s parishes and schools. The Toltons finally found a welcome at St. Peter Parish in town. At the age of 16, Augustus felt called to the priesthood, but he was denied acceptance by every Catholic seminary in the country. Still, he did not let that deter him from his call. Instead, with the help of two Quincy priests and Catholic benefactors, he worked for the next 10 years in tobacco factories and other jobs, until he was able to save enough money to travel to Rome to attend a seminary there. For the next six years he studied to become a missionary priest, with the understanding that he would be sent to minister in Africa, but God had other plans. On the night before his ordination in 1886, Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni, the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, summoned Tolton to tell him that he was being sent back to America. The cardinal said, “America has been called the most enlightened nation; we will see if it deserves that honor. If America has never seen a black priest, it has to see one now.” Tolton was assigned to St. Joseph Parish in Quincy, and although he won the hearts of young and old alike, he also endured humiliation, isolation, and condemnation from fellow priests who could not accept him. They called him the “n----r priest,” and when a large number of white Catholics attended his parish, the jealous pastor of a neighboring parish told him he should not allow white people in his church. Tolton responded, “We open the doors to the church. We do not tell people to go out; we tell them to go into the church.” Later he was invited to come to Chicago to minister to the emerging black Catholic community, for whom he developed and built St. Monica’s Parish. His remaining years there were spent ministering to the poor, caring for the sick and hungry, and working tirelessly to raise funds for the community. In fact, St. Katharine Drexel (foundress of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters and Xavier University of Louisiana) was one of his benefactors. Tolton’s health suffered as a result of his tireless work, and in 1897, at the age of 43, he died from complications of heatstroke while returning home from a pastoral retreat.