Very Rev. Kevin P. Fausz, CM, VU, pastor of Holy Redeemer and Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Michael Catholic Churches as well as dean of the Central Urban Deanery, was inducted into the Black Worship Clergy Hall of Fame. Read More

Prior to Sunday, January 26, 2020, the most famous Catholic on Earth was a Black Catholic. Excluding the Holy Father, there is little doubt concerning the accuracy of this claim concerning one Kobe Bean Bryant. Yet the thought has probably never crossed your mind. Why? This is the great conundrum of Black Catholics: they are at once one of the least familiar and yet most long-standing Christian groups in the United States. They are everywhere and apparently nowhere all at the same time. They are a demographic of uncommon faithfulness, forgotten legacies, and hidden figures. Read More

The extraordinary journey of Anne Marie Becraft, who became Oblate Sister of Providence Mary Aloysius, is one that powerfully illustrates the foundational presence of black Catholics in the U.S. church and nation at large. It is also a story that disrupts and revises much of what has been said and written about the American Catholic experience. Read More

There is an urgent need for personal conversion, without which the temptations of Satan, and the presence of evil, create a “hell here on earth,” Pope Francis said Monday in his 2020 Lenten message. “Christian joy flows from listening to, and accepting, the Good News of the death and resurrection of Jesus,” he said. “Whoever believes this message rejects the lie that our life is ours to do with as we will.” Rather, the pope said, life is born of the love of God our Father. Read More

How do you prepare for Lent? How have you prepared in the past? What are your ideas about what should happen during Lent? We have the traditional Catholic practices of praying, fasting, and almsgiving. So, we pray more than usual, or we pray with different emphases. We eat smaller or fewer meals or give up a favorite food or drink group. We give more of our resources or give them specifically to special works of mercy during Lent. Read More

On Sunday, February 2, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R. served as the Chief Celebrant and Homilist for this year’s Black History Month Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, NJ. The annual Mass was sponsored by the African American, African and Caribbean Apostolate of the Archdiocese of Newark. Read More

More than 50 years ago, the Civil Rights era and the changes of Vatican II combined in West Louisville to generate new energy in black Catholic life. Charles David (Cn. 219), a long-time parishioner of St. Marin de Porres Church experienced it first-hand and called it a “freeing of the Spirit.” “It was a great time in the church,” he said. “It gave African Americans a sense of belonging in the church.” Read More

Black Catholic communities have been a part of the Church in the Washington, DC area for centuries. But it wasn’t until the height of the Civil War that black Catholics in DC began the process of founding a parish of their own— with the help of President Abraham Lincoln. In the 16th and 17th century, Spanish laws in North America freed slaves who converted to Catholicism. Some of these freed slaves and their descendants formed their own settlement in the region that would become Florida. Read More