Father Augustus Tolton is one step closer to being the First Black American Saint A Vatican committee has unanimously voted to send the sainthood cause of the first African American priest in the United States to the next stage.
Father Augustus Tolton was born into slavery just outside of Hannibal in Ralls County, Missouri in 1854. He would go on to become the first recognized African American priest to be ordained by the Roman Catholic Church in the United States in 1886 at the age of 31.
