Bonus Venerable!!!

Venerable Augustus Tolton

Also Known as

Augustine Tolton

 12 June 2019, the Pope issued a decree of heroic Virtue for the Servant of God, Augustine Tolton, and eight other Servants of God,  Augustine Tolton was a Diocesan Priest; born in Brush Creek (United States of America) on April 1, 1854 and died in Chicago (United States of America) on July 9, 1897

With the promulgation of the decrees of heroic virtue, the Servants of God are granted the title “Venerable”. The next stage in the “causes” would be beatification, followed ultimately by canonization.

So what?   Who cares?   I’ll tell you so what then….Augustus Tolton was once a slave here in the Pre Civil War South.  He was baptized and reared Catholic.  He felt the calling to the priesthood early on, but no seminary here in this country would accept him.  Not even the liberal, felt banner hanging ones.   So, Tolton studied formally in Rome.

He was ordained on Easter Sunday of 1886 at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. He was assigned to the diocese of Alton (now the Diocese of Springfield), Tolton first ministered to his home parish in Quincy, Illinois. Later assigned to Chicago, Tolton led the development and construction of St. Monica's Catholic Church as a black "national parish church", completed in 1893 at 36th and Dearborn Streets on Chicago's South Side, where Bad Bad Leroy Brown would later hang out (until he learned a lesson about messin’ with the wife of a jealous man). 

Anyhoo, Augustus Tolton, if Beatified and later Cannonized, would become the first native born priest from the USA.  It’s a race between him and Blessed Stanley Rother at least….(Stanley is an American  martyr, we’ll cover him some day).