AUGUSTUS TOLTON, PRIEST

AUGUSTUS TOLTON, PRIEST - 9 JULY

VENERABLE AUGUSTUS TOLTON, PRIEST

Born John Augustine Tolton in Brush Creek, Missouri, USA, on April 1, 1854, of Peter Paul and Martha Jane Tolton, who were baptised Catholics, Augustus Tolton’s early childhood coincided with the Civil War. His father escaped slavery to join the Union Army and was subsequently killed in battle. Soon afterwards, his mother fled with her three children at night and, aided by Union soldiers, crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. They soon settled in the town of Quincy, where they joined a Catholic church whose congregation largely consisted of German immigrants.

Religiously inclined from his boyhood, nurtured by promptings of his mother Martha, Augustus was found spending hours in church in prayer in between job schedules. He attended classes taught by friendly priests and nuns who recognised the love of God in him, a tender devotion to the Church and a determination to serve people irrespective of their ethnic background.

In 1880, with the support of Fathers Peter McGirr and Theodore Wegmann, School Sister of Notre Dame Herlinde Sick, Franciscan Fathers Michael Richardt and Francis Ostrop, Augustus went to Rome, Italy, and began studying for the priesthood at the Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fide in Rome. Following the required six years of study, Augustus was ordained a priest with his class Easter Vigil April 24, 1886 at Saint John Lateran Basilica in Rome.

After his ordination, Fr Augustus returned to the United States in July 1886, and held his first public Mass at Saint Boniface church in Quincy, Illinois and eventually became pastor of Saint Joseph Catholic Church and school. In Quincy, Fr Augustus became such a popular preacher that he attracted members of neighbouring German and Irish congregations, too.

Years later, Fr Augustus was asked to go to Chicago, where they did not have a proper church. He took charge of building one, and through the combined efforts of this dedicated priest and the Saint Augustine Society, as well as a private gift, enough money was raised to erect most of the structure for a church building, and in 1893 Fr Augustus held mass in the new Saint Monica Church on Chicago’s South Side.

Fr Augustus became quite famous because of his virtues and his talent for preaching; he soon developed a national reputation as a minister and as a public speaker, yet he devoted the majority of the remainder of his life to his parishioners, most of whom lived in poverty, and to the completion and furnishing of Saint Monica Church. During the heatwave in 1897, Fr Augustus started feeling unwell and died of a heatstroke on July 9 that year.

Francis Cardinal George started the canonisation process in 2010, and in 2019 Pope Francis advanced his cause for sainthood, declaring Fr Augustus Tolton “Venerable.”

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Augustus-Tolton

https://tolton.archchicago.org/about/biography

https://toltoncatholic.org/biography-of-father-tolton/

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