Of the 50 million Catholics in America, only about 3 million are African American . The history of Black Catholics in the United States spans from colonization and enslavement to Black parishes founded by the church during the Jim Crow era.

“Black Catholics have been in what we know as the United States since 1565. So that’s a very long time,” M. Shawn Copeland, a retired Black theologian, told GBH’s Under the Radar. “We think about 1565 at St. Augustine in Florida. There were enslaved people there, but there were also free Black people there.”

Copeland said the Church’s response to people of African descent has been varied.

“We know that even in the 17th century, people were asking whether or not people of African descent had souls, and so should you bother baptizing them?” he said. “And then it became clear that if you baptize them, you could use the Scriptures in a very bent and twisted way to control them, make them docile.”

Despite segregation, and attempts at control and domination, Black Catholics have thrived, even leading the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in the 18th century , said Copeland.

And throughout that history, Black Catholic communities have found ways to make the oldest form of Christianity their own.

“When I travel around the country and people ask, ‘Do you have an African American parish?’ I’ll tell them, ‘No, I have a Black parish,’” said Father Oscar Pratt from Dorchester’s St. Katharine Drexel Parish. “In our community, you have people that are from everywhere. The Caribbean is well-represented. We are the home of the Nigerian Catholic community. And so it’s a beautiful picture of what the church should look like, what we’re supposed to be.”

Pratt says he uses songs and sayings from the Black church during Mass, which is often viewed as ritualistic, to blend the traditional Catholic liturgy to today’s Black culture.

“We have been bringing ourselves to Mass, to every form of worship, to fellowship,” Pratt said. “We know who we are. And take my parish: We are not a monolithic group. Even within the Caribbean cultures, there’s a commonality, but they each have their own little flavor.”

Feeling like the parish is connected to the larger Catholic community is essential to the church, which is why campaigns and advocacy for a Black Catholic saint is growing louder.

“Saints are always intertwined with the Catholic community from which they come,” said Michele Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. “Community is a core principle of Catholicism. And so every community, every nationality, advocates that they want certain of their people to be canonized, because it somehow is a recognition that they matter in the church, that they’re represented, and not only that they matter, but they matter to the universal church.”

Dillon said canonizing the “ Saintly Six ” could be an important and forward-thinking step for the Church.

“I do think the Catholic bishops in the U.S., certainly in more recent decades, going back at least to the 1950s, they’ve talked about racism as a sin. As a sin not only in society but within the Church. I think it’s a real opportunity for the Catholic Bishops here to stand up and elevate this hugely important piece of American Catholicism,” Dillon said.

Guests

  • M. Shawn Copeland, retired Black Catholic theologian
  • Father Oscar Pratt, pastor at St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Dorchester
  • Michele Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire