In the push for African-American saints, what more can we possibly do?

We, the Social Justice Committee of St. Ann Church in Baltimore, are calling for public acclamations of sainthood on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024 (All Saints' Day) for the first six African-American Catholic candidates. It has been three long years since we first started the initiative for their expedited canonizations.

Frankly speaking, we are creative, Black Catholic reformers in a White, male-dominated, hierarchical church, what some would say is a backward-thinking institution governed by canon law. Catholic life is very difficult for us, to say the least.

When the Archdiocese of Baltimore sought to close St. Ann and other churches exactly 30 years ago, we created a “Pennies to Heaven” campaign and collected 3,000,000 pennies from our congregants, locally and from around the country, for the church roof’s badly needed repairs. The $30,000 raised was a substantial total, getting the roof work done, but the national publicity that accompanied it was likewise helpful in convincing the urban vicar, the Josephite auxiliary bishop John H. Ricard, not to close our church. 

That was in 1994, and St. Ann Church has remained open and thrived since then. “What more can we do?” is the question.

During the pandemic, the Social Justice Committee searched for its next project and decided to advocate for the first-ever canonizations of African Americans. Before then, we didn’t realize that our Church has never recognized as a saint any Black person from our continent. Martin de Porres, canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1962, was from Peru. Our first six candidates are Venerables Mary Lange, Augustus Tolton, Henriette DeLille, and Pierre Toussaint; and Servants of God Julia Greeley and Thea Bowman. 

As once occurred with each of them, after a Catholic dies who people think of as holy, a local bishop can title them a “Servant of God” by starting the sainthood process and ordering a local investigation of their life and teachings. Then, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints evaluates and approves the candidate; thereafter, the pope can approve the candidate as “Venerable.” Next is beatification, and finally canonization, each requiring an approved miracle wrought by her or his intercession (or intervening with God). Once declared as a saint by the pope, the person is recognized by the Church throughout the world.

Our Social Justice Committee learned about the high financial costs required to complete the sainthood process—including vetting every aspect of a candidate’s life and raising money to pay for the research and the canonization ceremony at the Vatican or elsewhere. Perhaps the hardest part of it all nowadays is getting two miracles approved by the Vatican and its medical experts.

For one, the designated candidate must be the only one that was prayed to for a particular medical miracle. That difficult test, if passed once for beatification, must be achieved again for sainthood. It is practically an impossible bar to get over. Why is that so?

Our committee tried to fix the problem of having no Vatican-approved representation of our people among the communion of saints in heaven. We believe that if something is wrong now—and it surely is—we should fix it now. 

In 2021, we started a letter-writing campaign to Pope Francis that involved drafting the letter, addressing it to the pope at his home address, and circulating it for folks to sign a copy. We urged him to give us our saints now because our people have endured enslavement, racial segregation in Church, as well as mass incarceration and mass poverty. Through it all, we Black Catholics have kept the faith by not believing the attitudes and behaviors of Catholic White Supremacists—including laypeople, nuns, priests, religious brothers, bishops, and cardinals. 

In short, we’ve argued that the Saintly Six represent “the best in ourselves,” as was once said of Malcolm X.

Well over 4,000 persons signed letters, including individuals from the United States, Germany, Italy, West Africa, Barbados and Canada. All the letters were mailed to the pope except for 400 copies that our committee hand-delivered to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints in Rome during an audience they granted us on Oct. 31, 2023. We urged them to see to it that Pope Francis received them. Short of public acclamations, what more can we do?

We have educated the public about the Saintly Six, appearing on webinars, podcasts, and Zoom sessions. We have gone to cities such as Atlanta; Philadelphia; Arlington, Virginia; and Rome to do our advocacy for expedited canonizations. What more can we do?

We have prayed beatification prayers for each of the Saintly Six before the start of St. Ann Church’s 11am Sunday Mass for the past three years. What more can we do?

We posted 2-foot-by-3-foot portraits of the Saintly Six in our church and advised other churches where and how they could get them and do the same. Many churches in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and around the country have racially integrated iconography inside their churches for the first time ever.

We have organized and held two well-attended All Saints’ Day Masses at our home church, which 250-300 persons attended each time, including the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the Women’s Sodality, the Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary, and members of the Baltimore Racial Justice Circle. There were seven to nine priests concelebrating those Masses, with a different bishop as the main celebrant each time. Letters to the pope were available at each Mass. What more could we do?

Now, we find ourselves doing what the early Christians did in the early years of the Church: They publicly acknowledged or declared saints as persons of heroic virtue, and members of the public who knew them expressed confidence that they knew the person to be in heaven.

There have been saints and martyrs honored by the early Christians since, some say, around 100 AD. Martyrs were easily recognized or canonized, having suffered and died because of religious persecutions in their times. The formal process, as today’s Catholics know it, has been around only since the 10th century. Prior to the “process,” thousands of saints were declared by public acclamation. 

Most of the roughly 10,000 saints recognized by the Vatican are White, male, and European. None are from North America. Not one. Black Catholic candidates for sainthood have been stuck in the process, stuck on the road to sainthood. 

We are calling upon Catholics around the nation and the world to stand up on All Saints' Day for the Saintly Six. If possible, during Mass—particularly during the Prayers of the Faithful or during the announcements—acknowledge them. We ask congregants and clergy to call out the names of each candidate for sainthood and proclaim that we know they are holy people of heroic virtue. After each name, also say, “We know [she or he] is in heaven.”

From that point forward, we can proclaim our six as “publicly acclaimed saints.” Let us tell the world we have stood up for the Saintly Six and recognize them as we know God recognizes them. To appropriate an old Black spiritual, “If anybody asks you who they are, tell them they are saints of God.” 

What more could we do? God only knows!

Ralph E. Moore Jr. is a lifelong Black Catholic, educated by the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the Jesuits. He has served on various committees on race, racism, and poverty for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He is a married man with two children and four grandchildren. He is a member of the St. Ann Social Justice Committee. He can be reached at vpcs@yahoo.com.

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