James Augustine Healy was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1830, as
a slave. His father was an Irish immigrant who married his
mother, a Black woman, in Santo Domingo. Healy came to
Georgia to engage in cotton farming and accumulated a
considerable plantation. At that time, however, Georgia did
not recognize interracial marriages, so the children were
legally slaves. Ten children were born of this union, and
three of them became Catholic priests.
After a time the
father, Michael Morris Healy, sold his Georgia holdings and
moved to New York. In 1837, he placed James Augustine in a
Quaker school in Flushing, Long Island. In the early 1840s
James pursued further studies in the Franklin Park Quaker
School in Burlington, N. J. A chance meeting between the
elder Healy and Bishop John Fitzpatrick of Boston changed the
course of James' life.
On a boat sailing up the East coast,
Healy met the Bishop, and told him his life story. The result
was that the Bishop persuaded the elder Healy to send his
four sons to the newly-founded Holy Cross College, in
Worcester, Mass, and his oldest daughter, Martha, to the
Notre Dame Sisters' school in Boston. At Holy Cross, James
and his brothers soon became Catholics, returning to the
faith of their father's birthplace.
James Augustine proved to
be a brilliant student, and in 1849 graduated first in the
first class to be graduated from Holy Cross. James had grown
to love the Church and was determined to become a priest. He
entered the Sulpician Monastery in Montreal in 1849, and
after receiving the Subdiaconate in 1852, James Augustine
decided to transfer to the famous Sulpician Seminary in
France. As a student here, he continued to make a brilliant
scholastic record, and was ordained to the priesthood on June
10, 1854, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. He returned to
Boston and Bishop Fitzpatrick, who considered the young
priest his protege.
His first assignment was as an assistant
at the House of the Angel Guardian, a home for orphan boys.
He soon made a name for himself in that part of the city's
cholera-ridden slums. He administered the sacraments to the
cholera victims, along with the other killers of the poor — typhoid, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Despite his color and
his origins, the Irish Catholics of Boston came to accept him
as one of their own. After all, he was half Irish. Shortly
thereafter, Bishop Fitzpatrick named him to the Cathedral
staff and made the young priest his personal secretary,
handing the correspondence with other Bishops, the 61 priests
of the diocese, the seminarians and the religious orders
working in the diocese.
In June of 1855, the Bishop appointed
Father Healy as the Chancellor of the diocese, and authorized
him to set up the first chancery office. In 1862 came more
duties when he was made Rector of the Cathedral. Bishop
Fitzpatrick died in 1866, and the new Bishop made Father
Healy the pastor of St. James Parish, the largest parish in
Boston. In 1874 the Holy See announced that Father Healy had
been made the Bishop of Portland, Maine. He was the first
Black Bishop of the diocese.
One of the legends concerning his career
as pastor at St. James has to do with the great Boston fire
of 1870. The fire came toward his church, but Father Healy
came out in the path of the flames, with prayer book in hand,
and stood there praying. With a sudden change in the wind,
the course of the fire was redirected and the church was
saved. Thus, to his parishioners he proved his faith and his
courage in the path of a fire that destroyed 800 buildings in
a 65-acre area.
In 1874 Father Healy reached the peak of his
career when the Holy See announced that he had been elevated
to the post of Bishop of Portland, Maine. He was thus the
first Black priest to become a Bishop in the United States.
He presided over this diocese of the far north for 25 years.
His greatest concern in his new diocese was the poor, of whom
there were a large number, both Irish and French-Canadian. He
himself went out regularly to administer the last sacraments
to the ill, or to anyone who was dying as the results of a
street brawl, which were common at that time in his pioneer
diocese. He also made it a point to promote education, and
did his best to provide for Catholic schooling for the
poorest of the children of his diocese. He established a
Catholic school in Portland, and had a way of knowing which
of the children attending the school came from needy
families. Then he would appear at their house with food and
clothing. This was a time when few of the working people made
more than nine dollars a week. Thus, the Bishop made himself
a one-man relief agency for those in distress. Bishop Healy
brought in the Sisters of Mercy to staff parochial schools,
and he started a junior college for girls. During his 25-year
term as Bishop, his diocese prospered. More than 60 new
churches were built, along with 68 mission stations, and 18
more parochial schools were founded. An equal number of
convents and welfare institutions were built. The Catholic
population of the diocese more than doubled to 96,000 by the
end of his career.
For a number of years, Bishop Healy had
suffered from heart problems, and he died suddenly at age 70,
from a heart attack. After a sleepless night, during which
his doctors felt he was only suffering from acute
indigestion, his nurse told him that he would have a take a
long rest. "Yes, and I am finally going to get one," he
answered, and within a short while the life of the nation's
first Black Bishop came to an end. He was 70 years of age. He
was buried in a Catholic cemetery in the midst of the bodies
of his flock. Today a large Celtic cross marks his last
resting place.
Copyright 1997 Arlington Catholic Herald,
Inc. All rights reserved.