CatholicTV to air series on Black Catholics on sainthood track

CatholicTV will begin airing a new documentary series titled “Black Catholics: Footsteps to Sainthood” on Nov. 2. The half-hour program, which airs on the Archdiocese of Boston’s CatholicTV network, features six African American Catholics with sainthood causes in the United States. The series is scheduled to run during Black Catholic History Month in November.

The first episode focuses on Father Augustus Tolton, the first publicly recognized African American priest to serve in the United States. The episode uses a combination of live acting and artificial intelligence to depict his life. Father Tolton, the son of enslaved Black Americans, escaped from Missouri to Quincy, Illinois, during the Civil War. Although he received a Catholic education in Illinois, he was unable to attend a domestic seminary due to racism in the U.S. Church and instead studied at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. He served Black Catholic parishes in Chicago until his death from heatstroke in 1897.