Nathaniel Tinner

1 week ago | blackcatholicmessenger.org | Nathaniel Tinner

Oblate Sisters of Providence — Baltimore — Maryland — Religious life — Black women — Black sisters — New Jersey — Trenton The New Jersey native and former university administrator has been a member of the Oblates, the nation's oldest Black Catholic order, since 1998. The Oblate Sisters of Providence, the nation’s oldest operating Black Catholic religious order, have elected Sr Marcia Hall as their new superior general, the 21st in their 196-year history.

1 week ago | blackcatholicmessenger.org | Nathaniel Tinner

Saint Frances Academy, the nation’s oldest Black Catholic school still in operation, has announced plans for a middle school opening in the fall. The Baltimore institution, founded in 1828 by Venerable Mary Lange and what would become the Oblate Sisters of Providence—a historic order of Black religious sisters—announced the news on May 21.

1 week ago | ncronline.org | Michael Sean Winters |Nathaniel Tinner

Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in rural South Carolina, has inaugurated a new meditation garden memorializing the enslaved African Americans and Indigenous who once worked the land, part of a larger effort for atonement at the 76-year-old institution. A blessing ceremony with Bishop Jacques Fabre-Jeune of Charleston, South Carolina, took place April 26 at the property in Moncks Corner, which functioned as Mepkin Plantation under prominent British colonists beginning in the late 18th century.

2 weeks ago | blackcatholicmessenger.org | Nathaniel Tinner

An annual pilgrimage honoring Venerable Augustus Tolton, the nation’s first openly Black Catholic priest, will take place this summer, coinciding with the Jubilee Year of Hope and traveling from Chicago to Missouri. The expanded route this year will run from Aug. 22-24 and be led by retired Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago Joseph N. Perry, an African-American prelate who serves as diocesan postulator for Tolton’s sainthood cause.

2 weeks ago | blackcatholicmessenger.org | Nathaniel Tinner

Chris Ellis Jr. is a Washington native whose experience as a Catholic began at Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Church, where he was raised in the African-American tradition. At the age of 37, he is now in the final stages of formation for the permanent diaconate in the Diocese of Trenton, where he is an attorney and one of a select few young Black Catholics pursuing ordained ministry.