This story was originally published online with Word In Black, a collaboration of the nation’s leading Black news publishers (of which The Informer is a member).
November is Black Catholic History Month, set aside to acknowledge and celebrate the sacrifices, contributions, and achievements of the three million African American Catholics in the United States.
An instrument of that history-keeping task, the Black Catholic Messenger, is marking its fifth year of gathering and distributing news of and to the ever-growing body of faith and its supporters.
While Nate Tinner-Williams, cofounder and editor, is not the sole visionary behind the Messenger, he is definitely the engine that solicited writers and supporters to bring it to fruition.
From Rome to the Roots of Black Catholicism
“As we’ve become more of a traditional news operation, the team of writers has grown exponentially and the coverage area has expanded from just being national to also international,” he says. “We’ve covered stories in Rome. We’ve covered the deaths of two popes. We’ve grown quite a bit in the last five years, and we’re so excited about what’s coming in the future.”
Tinner-Williams says he never imagined writing a story about an American pope.
“In 2018, I couldn’t even imagine I would be a Catholic, so to imagine I’d be writing about an American pope who’s sort of Black in 2025, is unbelievable, truly. But you know, that’s how God works.”
As for the special month being set aside, this month marks 35 years of National Black Catholic History Month.
“It was founded in 1990 by the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, which, during the time of the Black Catholic Movement, promoted the visibility of Black Catholics throughout history. So they decided to institute this month,” Tinner-Williams explains. “They had months commemorating different things in the Catholic Church.”
The Messenger website lists national and state-by-state events throughout the nation.
”It’s incredible to see all that goes on and the bishops that participate, the different organizations that put together events online and in person. And it just so happens that there are other official commemorations in the Catholic Church that happen in November, like the feast of Saint Martin de Porres and the founding of the Knights of Peter Claver.”
Documenting the Path to Sainthood
And the Messenger continues to cover the process of sainthood for the prospective African American Catholics.
“There’s never been an African-American to reach either of the consecutive stages, which is when you can start naming churches after someone, build official shrines, and all that. So we’re still waiting for the first African-American to be beatified or canonized,” Tinner Williams says.
The editor of The Black Messenger says he can list all the names.
“You have Servant of God Thea Bowman,” he continued, “Servant of God Julia Greeley, Venerable Pierre Toussaint, Venerable Augustus Tolton, Venerable Henriette DeLille, Venerable Mary Lang, and the latest is Servant of God, Martin Maria de Porres Ward, who was the first African American member of the conventional Franciscans.”
Tinner-Williams says he likes “to celebrate an eighth as well because there’s a Black Puerto Rican who’s on the path to sainthood as well, Venerable Rafael Cordero.”
As Tinner-Williams easily rattled off the names with precision, he made the distinction between the differing titles.
“The ones who I mentioned as servants of God, that’s the first stage; second stage is venerable. Mary Lang from Baltimore actually just advanced to the second stage recently, within the last year or two, I think. And so getting people from one stage to the next can often take a while,” he says. “But yeah, there has been movement recently on those causes. Servant of God Thea Bowman’s cause was just opened in 2019. And the guy who worked in Brazil, who was from Massachusetts and D.C., his cause was opened the year after in 2020.”
He says some of these causes are actually quite new, even though the person may have died several decades ago, or, in the case of some of the older causes, more than 100 years ago.
A Generation Focused on Social Justice
As for the younger Catholics, the Messenger appeals to them through its podcast, which covers social justice.
“I know the younger people listen to a lot of podcasts. It’s also in a video format. But I think young people who are still involved in the Catholic Church, especially young Black Catholics, are very much interested in the social justice focus of the church — Catholic social teaching. Some of those principles often get de-emphasized among the laity and sometimes even among our bishops,” he says.
However, Tinner-Williams offers a solution.
“If they’re not going to get it from the leaders, they can find it in certain segments of Catholic media,” he emphasizes. “We hope Black Catholic Messenger is a place where they can find it.”