This week the country marked National HBCU Week to recognize the accomplishments of historically black colleges and universities throughout the United States. Earlier this month, leaders from the country’s 101 HBCUs convened in Washington, D.C. for the annual National HBCU Conference, where they spoke to Congress of the ongoing importance of HBCUs, and where President Donald Trump announced that religiously affiliated HBCUs would now receive full federal funding. Read More

Globally speaking, black people have been practicing Catholicism since the earliest days of the church. Additionally, black people were practicing Catholicism in North America for more than 200 years before the United States was founded. Yet, African-American Catholics are constantly required to justify their existence. People like the Rev. Augustus Tolton, Charles Randolph Uncles, S.S.J., Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., and Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., spent their lives working to make sure the church hierarchy and the people in the pews knew something as basic as that there are black people who are Catholic. Enough! Read More

he death of St. Peter Claver offers a lesson in the way the world treats saints — before and after they die. The son of an affluent Catalonian family, and academically successful, he entered the Jesuits in 1601 at the age of twenty. At the seminary, a lay brother saw in him a calling to care for the slaves in the Americas, who were horribly mistreated. (That lay brother would later be sainted, as St. Alphonsus Rodriquez.) And not just enslaved and horribly mistreated, but left without spiritual care. After he’d studied more, in 1610,the Jesuits sent Peter to Cartagena, on the coast of what is today Colombia. He was twenty-nine, and would never go home. Read More

Simone Arianne Biles was born on March 14, 1997 and is an American artistic gymnast. Biles is the first African-American to be world all-around champion and the first woman to win three consecutive world all-around titles. Simone Biles made history again, as the first American to win a medal in every event at the World Gymnastics Championship in Doha, Qatar, taking home six medals. Biles dominated the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, earning five medals, including four golds.Biles also holds the record for most gold medals won by a female gymnast in the history. She also is a Faithful Catholic who never misses Mass and prays the Rosary. Biles explained, Read More

In his homily during a Mass for seminarians and their families, Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory addressed how parents, who made the promise to raise their son in the faith at his baptism, can continue, along with the archbishop himself, to love and support the seminarians during the upcoming academic year. “All our promises are sincere,” he said. “But they need the grace of the Holy Spirit to persevere.” Read More

HOUSTON (CNS) — Confronting social justice issues such as bullying was at the top of the agenda for the 600 or so youth gathered in Houston for the 23rd biennial convention of the Junior Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver. Bullying is an issue that plagues many young people, especially African Americans. An effort spearheaded by Kennedy Wiltz, a 16-year-old Our Lady Star of the Sea parishioner in Houston, and 17-year-old Carrington Guillory of Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the event marked a turning point for youth division of the Knights of Peter Claver, and for the two themselves. Read More

Sister Pat Murphy and Sister JoAnn Persch marched into the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill recently with their identification and $50 worth of bail money, knowing what was coming. The nuns were in Washington, D.C., on July 18 for the Catholic Day of Action for Immigrant Children, which drew more than 200 Catholics from around the United States. Wearing placards with pictures of children who died while in federal custody over purple Sisters of Mercy T-shirts, they prayed the rosary and sang. A Jesuit priest blessed the group as authorities arrived, handcuffing each protester with a zip tie. Read More

Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2016 / 03:12 am (CNA).- For Fr. Stephen Thorne, Black History Month is not only a chance to remember the struggles faced by the African-American community throughout the centuries. It’s also an opportunity to learn from the witness of one of the oldest communities of Catholics in the U.S. This witness of Black Catholics, in the face of discrimination and animus, is a gift all Catholics can learn from, said Fr. Thorne, an African-American priest in the Philadelphia archdiocese. “The resilience of African-American Catholics today is a sign of (their) great faith,” he told CNA. Read More