WWW.THEFLORIDACATHOLIC.ORG November 2020
FLORIDA Catholic
MIAMI ARCHDIOCESE
BLESSED FATHER MICHAEL MCGIVNEY
At left, two Knights of Columbus Florida Honor Guard members carry a framed portrait of Father Michael McGivney, founder of the organization, into St. Mary Cathedral for a Mass celebrated Oct. 31, 2020, the day of his beatification. At right, Michael Gizewski, Florida State Council State Warden, salutes fellow Knights after the Mass to mark the beatification of their founder. Pope Francis authorized Father McGivney's beatification, the first step on the path to sainthood, following the survival of a Tennessee boy who suffered from a grave case of fetal hydrops while in utero. See story, Page 19. (PHOTOS BY MARLENE QUARONI FC) ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO
of the Florida Catholic staff
MIAMI A long time ago, in a nation far, far away: That's how lots of white people tend to view racism. But it wasn't that long ago for Donald Ed- wards, associate superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Miami. In 1982, after getting hired as principal at St. Michael School in Memphis, he requested his personnel file from his previ- ous employer, St. Ann School in Bartlett, Tennessee, both in the Diocese of Memphis. That's when he saw the note St. Ann's principal, a Sister of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, had written on his application after interviewing him: "Black but refined." I tore it up, I was so angry," Edwards recalled. He had been hired at St. Ann in 1978, a school with an all- white enrollment. "I was told after I started there that some families left the school when I started," Edwards said. Four years later, while attending a confer- ence for Catholic school administrators at a retreat center in Alabama, the superintendent of Memphis Catholic schools, a Sister of St. Joseph from Boston, found out her room was across the hall from Edwards'. She insisted on being moved, noting it would be improper for her to sleep across the hall from a Black man. Yet, said Edwards, "she ushered me into the principalship, and nurtured me and loved me and groomed me. But she was just subject to her own bigotry in that instance. She was a lady that I greatly admired." Those are the "lights and shadows" of the African American experience that Arch- bishop Thomas Wenski referred to when he marked the start of Black Catholic History Month in the archdiocese. The Mass took place Nov. 8, 2020 at St. Augustine Church and Catholic Student Center in Coral Gables. To speak of the experience of African Americans in the Catholic Church brings us, of course, to the point of Black Catholic History Month," the archbishop noted. It is a his- tory "with many bright lights" as well as "too many dark shad- ows." Among them the fact that, as recently as 60 years ago, Black Catholics had to sit in the back pews at Gesu Church in down- town Miami and wait until the white people received Com- munion before doing so them- selves. Sometimes they had to go after Mass downstairs to the basement in order to re- ceive Communion. That was the norm," said Katrenia Reeves-Jackman, director of the archdiocesan Office of Black Catholic Min- istry. She, too, speaks from personal experience: that of her parents. Yet Reeves-Jackman, Miami-born and Overtown-raised, attended Catholic schools all her life: Holy Redeemer (now closed) in Liberty City and Msgr. Ed- ward Pace High in Miami Gardens. It was not until I was in the sixth grade
I want you to be my brother'
Black Catholics reflect on 'lights and shadows' of their history, enduring racism and steadfast faith
Katrenia Reeves- Jackman, director of the archdiocesan Office of Black Catholic Ministry, poses in front of a painting of a black Madonna and child. The picture at left is of a very young bishop, now Cardinal-elect Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., the first African- American to be elevated to that rank. (PHOTOS BY ANA RODRIGUEZ- SOTO)
that I ever even saw a black religious or a black nun," Reeves-Jackman remembered.
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Black Catholic History Month, celebrated every November in the United States, seeks to celebrate and talk about the contributions of Black Catholics to the Church. As Reeves-Jackman pointed out, "Black Catholics begin way back with the Acts of the Apostles. We've been around for a while. We've had black popes. We have black saints," including six African Americans currently embarked on the journey to sainthood. But Black Catholics are a minority within a minority, accounting for about 3 million of the more than 70 million U.S. Catholics, and less than 1% of the 1.5 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Miami. Only two designated African American parishes remain in South Florida: St. Philip Neri in Miami Gardens and Holy Redeemer in Liberty City. Two others closed in 2009: St. George in Fort Lauderdale merged with Our Lady Queen of Martyrs; and St. Francis Xavier in Overtown, founded in 1927 by Black Catho- lics looking for a more welcoming experience, merged back into nearby Gesu. In South Florida, Black Catholics are not all African Americans. They include Span- ish-speakers from Cuba and other parts of Latin America; Creole-speakers from Haiti;
Donald Edwards
PLEASE SEE BLACK, 2
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