Originally published at National Catholic Register
A Black American priest who left his country because prejudice wouldn’t allow him to practice his ministry in the United States is ironically the seventh and most recent African American to be considered for beatification.
The Servant of God, born in 1918 as Matthias DeWitte Ward in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood to an interracial couple, he grew up as a Methodist. During his childhood, he, his parents and 11 siblings moved to Washington, D.C., where he experienced prejudice from both whites and Blacks.
While a teenager in Washington, he was introduced to Catholicism, and he often found himself in the city’s St. Augustine Church. While attending Mass with a friend at age 17, he decided to convert and was confirmed in St. Matthew Cathedral in 1940. Not long thereafter, he discerned a religious calling; and in 1942, he entered the Salvatorian Fathers’ seminary in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin, where he stayed until an infectious lung condition forced him to leave.
For uncertain reasons, he moved to Brooklyn. There, he was introduced to the Franciscan Conventual Friars Minor. At the time, most seminaries wouldn’t take Black men, but the Conventual Franciscans accepted him into St. Francis Seminary on Staten Island,
