When Augustus Tolton prepared to take his vows as a Catholic priest in 1886, he assumed that he would leave Rome for missionary work in Africa. Then a cardinal told him that he was bound for Illinois. Tolton was astonished: “Must I go back to America, where I was not wanted as a priest?”
Born into slavery on a Missouri farm in 1854, Tolton grew up to become America’s first black Catholic priest. He attended seminary abroad because none in the U.S. would take him. Leaving for Italy in 1880, he thought he never would return to his native country.
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