From BlackCatholicMessenger.com: As the synod rolls on in Rome, African Americans plan to make their voices heard in the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Ralph Moore Jr. explains. Read More

CHARLOTTE — Men in blue fezzes and a long line of women wearing white filed into Our Lady of Consolation Church on Sunday, Oct. 15, on their way to make history. They were celebrating the start of the first chapter of the Knights of Peter Claver and the Knights of Peter Claver Ladies Auxiliary in the Diocese of Charlotte. The Knights of Peter Claver Chapter 411 in Charlotte was formally inaugurated in June, and the Ladies Auxiliary was inaugurated on Oct. 15. Both are based at Our Lady of Consolation, a historically African American parish in Charlotte. “It has taken a 30-year effort to get to Charlotte and make you part of the Knights of Peter Claver family,” Grant Jones, the organization’s New Orleans-based executive director, told a large crowd at an 11 a.m. Mass held in the parish’s Family Life Center. The organization was founded in 1909 by four Josephite priests and three laymen from the Diocese of Mobile, Ala., who wanted to form a Catholic fraternal order to serve the African American community. The Church’s other fraternal orders in the United States at the time did not allow Black members. The order expanded to include the Ladies Auxiliary in 1926 and is now based in New Orleans. Named for a 17th-century Spanish Jesuit priest who ministered to enslaved people, the organization now has more than 400 chapters in the U.S. and one in Colombia. There is currently one other North Carolina chapter in the Diocese of Raleigh. Read More

from Catholicphilly.com: On the Feast of St. Peter Claver, known for his ministry to African Americans, over 200 people gathered at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul for a Mass honoring Fr. Rayford E. Emmons, the first African American ordained Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, as he entered his 50th year of service to parishioners. The Mass was sponsored by the Philadelphia chapters of the Knights of Peter Claver and the Knights of Peter Claver Ladies Auxiliary, international Catholic fraternal and sororal service orders. The Knights of Peter Claver is largest and oldest Black Catholic lay-led organization still in existence. It was founded in 1909 in Mobile, Alabama. The St. Peter Claver Mass is an annual event, though this is the first time it was held at the Cathedral Basilica. Read More

The Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation (DTRF), one of several active initiatives concerning reparations for the Jesuits’ involvement in American slavery, has announced $27 million in new donations, moving the organization toward its lofty $100M five-year goal announced in 2021. The contributions, which will support the foundation’s social programs in descendant communities, include sums from Georgetown University, where 272 African Americans were infamously sold in 1838 to save the school, and from provinces of the Jesuits—the largest Catholic religious order in the world. Read More

BlackCatholicMessenger.com The Kentucky native was chosen earlier this month to lead the 55-year-old organization in its post-pandemic era. Read More

n May, Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry was appointed chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism. Bishop Perry succeeds Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre of Louisville, who served two terms as chairman. Bishop Perry also chairs the conference’s Subcommittee on African American Affairs. Bishop Perry recently spoke with editor Joyce Duriga about the work of the committee. Read More

A podcast production by Catholic publishing company OSV (the parent company of OSV News) with a nationally-recognized religious sister is featuring “Hope Stories with Black Catholics” this summer. “A hope story is a time in someone’s life when he or she was called to hope in a deep way,” Sister Josephine Garrett, a member of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, told OSV News of the ongoing series. “Hope (especially hope that is deep and profound and connected to the deepest desires of our hearts) takes courage, and as we wait for what is longed for, we can experience grief, loss, joy, fear, expectancy — all sorts of feelings.” “Hope isn’t the easiest experience to enter into,” she added, saying that “in each episode the guests share times in their life when they were brought to the thresholds of hope.” Read More

DETROIT — An estimated 80 women gathered at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit on Aug. 12 for the 2023 Black Catholic Women’s Conference. The gathering was a time of fellowship, worship, inspiration, and health awareness, as women across the Archdiocese of Detroit — and some hailing from the Diocese of Lansing and Diocese of Toledo — came together under the conference theme “God has Entrusted Us with His Word.” “If women realize how valuable they really are, they could move mountains,” said Vickie Figueroa, associate director of cultural ministries and Black Catholic ministry for the Archdiocese of Detroit. “If you know this gift of God, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, when we learn to love ourselves as God loves us, then we can move mountains.” Angela L. Swain, Ph.D., director of the Office of Human Dignity and Solidarity for the Archdiocese of Chicago, delivered the keynote address, offering a subtitle to the conference’s theme. Read More