Theater drama: Spotlight on first known African American priest ordained in Catholic Church

Nov. 14—A slave's midnight escape across the Mississippi River. A seminarian's journey to Rome, in defiance of the racism in his own country. A ground-breaking priest's ministry in Chicago.

Venerable Augustus Tolton's life reads like the stuff of a drama.

And this week in Toledo, it will be: Saint Luke Productions presents Tolton: From Slave to Priest at the Ohio Theatre, 3112 Lagrange St., at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Wednesday, and again at 10 a.m. Thursday.

IF YOU GO:

What: Tolton: From Slave to Priest

When: 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m. Thursday

Where: Ohio Theatre, 3112 Lagrange St.

Admission: Tickets are free to reserve at reconnecttoledo.org; free-will offerings will be accepted at the performances.

Tolton is recommended for audiences 10 and older.

Starring Jim Coleman as Augustus Tolton, Tolton is a stage drama that turns a spotlight on the first known African American to be ordained a priest in the Catholic Church. Ordained in 1886, Father Tolton served in Quincy, Ill., and Chicago until he died at age 43 in 1897.

It's a timely performance, in light of November as Black Catholic History Month, according to Sister Virginia Welsh, of the downtown deanery behind the initial push to bring Tolton to the Diocese of Toledo. It was staged in Tiffin on Friday and Lima on Saturday, and is being staged in Mansfield on Sunday, before its local run concludes this week in Toledo.

It's also expected to be, for many in the audience, an introduction to Augustus Tolton — an influential figure, both historically and spiritually, who nonetheless is relatively little known.

That's even with his status as "venerable," an early step toward sainthood in the Catholic Church. His cause has been under consideration since 2019.

"There are so many people who haven't seen or heard this story, and we want to share it," said the actor, Mr. Coleman. "That's our mission, to share it with as many [as we can]."

Mr. Coleman performs as the only actor onstage in Tolton, accompanied by others who appear onscreen for a multimedia performance that covers some of the spiritual and biographical high points in the life of the late priest.

Father Tolton was born a slave in Missouri in 1854, and raised in the faith tradition of the white family that he and his family were forced to serve. They escaped to freedom in Quincy, Ill., in 1862, in a dead-of-night journey over the Mississippi River that the actor said he considers among the most impactful scenes dramatized in Tolton.

Encouraged by his mother, Martha, Augustus Tolton continued to grow in his devotion to the Catholic Church in Quincy. But the church at the time was one of many institutions that was grappling with questions of race and racial relations under post-Civil War Reconstruction; the young boy turned to priests and nuns who saw beyond the color of his skin, and who taught and encouraged him in his faith.

When he was refused seminary training in the United States, these same helped him to enroll and eventually complete his religious education in Rome. Upon his ground-breaking ordination there in 1886, he and others had anticipated that he would be sent to minister as a missionary in Africa. Instead, he was sent home to serve his home diocese in Quincy, and then in Chicago.

Saint Luke's Leonardo and Patti Defilippis co-wrote Tolton, in conjunction with Bishop Joseph N. Perry of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who as diocesan postulator for the late priest's cause for sainthood shared the sort of historical records that Mr. Defilippis said ensure an accurate, if artistic, representation of Augustus Tolton.

Mr. Defilippis debuted Tolton in 2017, but he's been in the business of dramatizing the lives of saints for more than four decades. A former Shakespearean actor, he launched the Washington State-based Saint Luke Productions with his own one-man performance, The Gift of Peace: The First Six Chapters of Saint Luke's Gospel, in 1980.

Today he's an actor, director, producer and president of the company that has several lives-of- the-saints productions running at any given time: Actors portray St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Faustina and St. John Vianney, for example, on stages across the country, and in front of audiences that the company founder said have ranged from schoolchildren to prison inmates and traditional theater-goers.

Sister Ginny said several local schools are planning to attend the early performances in Toledo, which are also open to the general public.

Mr. Defilippis was inspired to feature Father Tolton after reading a book about the holy man: "What attracted me is that his story is so compelling," he said, noting some of the conflicts that he faced and overcame, like slavery and the still-relevant theme of racism. "It's an incredible story of heroism; it's an incredible story that deals with the conflict today."

He echoed Mr. Coleman in his desire, through the stage performance, to introduce audiences to Father Tolton. He's one of six Black Americans under consideration for sainthood.

"I think, to be honest with you, he's one of the most important people in the history of the church in America," Mr. Defilippis said of Father Tolton. "But at the same time, he's one of the most important figures in Black history in the United States of America, and he's not that well known."

Father Tolton wasn't known to Mr. Coleman, either, at least before the veteran television actor was encouraged by a friend to audition for the role. Mr. Coleman is not Catholic, but he is a man of faith who jokes that, in his role as Augustus Tolton, those who used to tell him as a child that he'd follow in his father's footsteps as a preacher turned out to be right after all.

Like Mr. Defilippis, Mr. Coleman sees the stage as an opportunity to minister.

"I just felt like, wow, here I am. I've had this really nice career, and what have I given back?," reflected the Florida-based actor, who, at 60, said he's otherwise retired. "After God has given me so much, and allowed me to raise my children, and to put them in college — as an actor, something that you have to be very fortunate to do that — what have I given back?"

"This was the perfect answer," he continued: "Go out and share his word, tell the story of his saint, this Black man that struggled and persevered through all kinds of adversity."