Venerable Mother Mary Lange (1789-1882) 
Born in Haiti and raised in Cuba, Mary Elizabeth Lange immigrated to Baltimore in 1813 and settled among the city’s large Afro-Caribbean population. Recognizing a severe lack of opportunities for education in her community, she began teaching free Black children in her home. With the support of a local priest, this developed into a more formal ministry of catechesis and eventually became the charism of a new religious order: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, established in 1829 as the first order for women of color in the United States. While maintaining education as their primary focus, Mother Lange and her sisters also opened homes for widows and nursed the sick, most heroically during the cholera outbreak of 1832. Persevering despite racism—both inside and outside the Church—Mother Lange continued to serve the poor for over 50 years, until her death in 1882. Her Oblate Sisters continue their ministry today, in Baltimore and beyond. 


Venerable Father Augustus Tolton (1854-1897) 
Augustus “Gus” Tolton was born into slavery in Missouri and escaped with his mother to Illinois during the Civil War. Raised a Catholic, he excelled in school and eventually discerned a vocation to the priesthood. But despite the backing of his bishop, no seminary in North America would accept his application. Undeterred, Tolton was allowed to enter the Pontifical Urban University in Rome. Ordained in 1886, Tolton became the first openly Black Catholic priest from the United States (Bishop James Healy and Georgetown University President Patrick Healy, biracial Catholic brothers from Georgia, had been ordained earlier but had passed as White). Expecting to serve as a missionary in Africa, Tolton was instead sent back as a missionary to the U.S. He served energetically in this mission field for the next decade, establishing the first “Negro national parish” at St. Monica’s in Chicago, under the premise that Black Catholics would flourish within their own cultural context, just as German or Polish or Italian Catholics would. Pope Francis declared him Venerable in 2019.