NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
Who was the first African-American priest? Many say Venerable Augustine Tolton, the first priest to admit to the honor and look the part. In truth, however, that title belongs to Bishop James Healy.
Born in 1830, Healy was the eldest son of Michael Healy—a Georgia planter who sent all his children by his mixed-race wife to live in the North rather than risk them becoming slaves in the South. James Healy was the first of the children to go.
In 1837, when he was just 7 years old, Healy left Georgia for a Quaker school in New York. He later transferred to The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduated as the school’s inaugural valedictorian in 1849.
While still in school, Healy dreamed of becoming a Jesuit, but because the Jesuits’ formation house was in Maryland—a slave state—he pursued the diocesan priesthood instead. After studying in Canada and Europe, Healy was ordained in 1854 and then returned to the Diocese of Boston.
There, only a few close friends and mentors knew that Healy wasn’t the full-blooded Irish priest he appeared to be. That helped him rise quickly through the clerical ranks, and by 1866, he was pastor of Boston’s largest parish.
In 1875, America’s first (unofficial) African-American priest became her first (equally unofficial) African-American bishop, when Pope Pius IX named Healy the second bishop of Portland, Maine. Healy shepherded his see for 25 years, and as new immigrants flowed into Maine, he oversaw the construction of 60 parishes, 68 missions, 18 convents, and 18 schools.
Bishop Healy died on August 5, 1900. Although he never publicly talked about his African ancestry, the Archdiocese of Boston nevertheless honors its most notable black Catholics with the Bishop James Healy Award.
