August 5, 1900 • James Healy, First African-American Catholic Bishop

t first the doctors diagnosed James Healy's pains as indigestion. When he arrived at the hospital on August 3d, his symptoms were mild enough to be misread. But on August 4th, America's first African-American Roman Catholic bishop suffered a massive heart attack. On this day, August 5, 1900, James Healy died.

When his will was read, the world learned that James was poorer in goods at his death than he had been when he became Bishop of Maine. It should not have surprised them. All of his life, he was concerned for the poor, and even refused to live in the bishop's mansion he was entitled to, living in a rector's house instead.

James was born on a Cotton plantation in Georgia in 1830. His father, Michael Healy, an Irish deserter from the British army, fell in love with Mary Eliza, a light colored slave. He bought her and they were married by a traveling preacher. This was against Georgia's law. As far as the state was concerned, the children were black because their mother had African blood. All of them could be sold as slaves. It was illegal to educate these children. Michael sent some of the boys North to study in Quaker schools and worded his will to protect his family should he unexpectedly die.

When James was fourteen, his father enrolled him in the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit school in Massachusetts. Within two years, James decided to become a priest. After graduating first in his class in 1849, he entered a seminary at Montreal, Canada. In order to take orders, he had to prove that he had been baptized and his parents properly married. This proved difficult, for both had recently died.

But that hurdle was finally overcome and Healy sailed to France to continue his studies. He was ordained at the Cathedral of Notre Dame Paris, in 1854. Thus he became the first African-American ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood. He returned to America to serve as an assistant to a priest in Boston; but he proved so hard-working and useful that Boston's bishop tapped his skills. In each of his posts, he had to overcome racial prejudice although he emphasized his whiteness. When asked to participate in an African-American Catholic Conference, he refused: "We are of that Church where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor freeman, but Christ is all and in all."

Unjust laws prevented Roman Catholics from administering the last rites to Catholics in public hospitals and jails. They could not operate their own orphanages. James fought these laws and the secret societies that sponsored them in Massachusetts.

Having proven himself able to handle critics in Boston, James was made bishop of Portland, Maine. Again he managed a largely white diocese, disarming prejudice by hard work. He crisscrossed Maine, traveling 30,000 miles in his first year. In his 25 years as bishop, James founded 60 new churches, 68 missions, 18 convents and 18 schools, and still found time to lobby on social issues such as Indian rights and child labor laws.

Needless to say, his health could not stand up under that kind of work load. Eventually he had to sail to the Caribbean in winter because of health problems. When he died he was buried in a simple grave yard, having refused to be buried in his cathedral's vault.

Bibliography:

1. Foley, Albert Sidney. Bishop Healy: beloved outcaste; the story of a great priest whose life has become a legend. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954.
2. "James Healy." http://08016.com/jhealy.html.
3. O Carm, Fr Kevin O’Neill Shanley. Bishop James A Healy First Black Prelate – was Irish-American Too! http://www.spms.org/africa_main_files/ bishop_james_a_healy.html
4. "James Augustus Healy." Virtual American Biographies. http://www.famousamericans.net/jamesaugustinehealy/
5. Various internet articles.

Last update June, 2007