State’s groundbreakers wonder who will follow

Clergy, religious trying to encourage black youth to discern a religious vocation

By Aprille Hanson
Associate Editor

Second in a two-part series on religious vocations for black Catholics.

Sister de Porres Polk, OSB, grew up attending Our Lady of Lords Church in Erath, La., with few black members. She took her first vows in 1966 with the Olivetan Benedictine sisters of Holy Angels Convent in Jonesboro but began her Catholic faith sitting in the back of the church, not by choice.

“At that time it was segregated” in the late 40s, early 50s she said. “Blacks sat in the back, whites took all the seats in the front. Then we had to get up and let the whites sit” if there were no seats left. “It wasn’t easy. I’ve had my ups and downs with them. Some were friendly and helpful, some were not,” she said of the white community. “We were used to it, so we just went with it.”

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, integration helped make attending church a better experience and for about 10 years, Sister de Porres felt the call to religious life.

“I just kept praying about it. Some of the sisters from this order were teaching at my parish, that’s where I got my call to vocations was with them,” Sister de Porres said. “I ran for 10 years from (God) because I didn’t want to go to the convent. After 10 years he said, ‘You’re going.’” 

This year, she will celebrate 50 years as a sister.

“There’s a difference in it now. It’s much better than it was. When I first entered I kind of felt unwanted. It just took me awhile to stick it out with the Lord,” said Sister de Porres, who chose her religious name after St. Martin de Porres, a beloved saint for Afro-Latin Americans. She is the only black member of her convent.

“I’m enjoying it immensely. I’ve always looked at them as being my sisters and I’ve always told them that,” she said.

For about 13 years, she worked as an associate to Father Warren Harvey, who leads the Diocesan Council for Black Catholics, helping to put on retreats and events for outreach to the black community.

“A lot more needs to be done for the black Catholics; they need to be reached out to and know that they’re wanted, they’re needed and they’re important,” said Sister de Porres, 72. “Let them know what’s going on at the diocese, what the Church is doing. Some of them will follow.”

Sister de Porres’ story is similar to other black religious men and women. The history of black religious vocations is replete with examples of racism, racial segregation and marginalization, according to Shannen Dee Williams, author of the coming book “Subversive Habits: Black Nuns and the Struggle to Desegregate Catholic America after World War I.” At their peak around 1965, there were about 1,000 African-American sisters, Williams said, but there are only about 400 today.

Brother Dominic Faciane, OSB, who teaches a religious studies class and vocal music and piano courses at Subiaco Abbey, grew up in Louisiana, attending a parish that was split between black and white members. St. Genevieve Church in Slidell, La., merged in 1967 from two predominantly white and black parishes.

In New Orleans, Brother Dominic saw predominantly black religious orders, including Sisters of the Holy Family, Divine Word Missionaries and the Josephite Fathers.

Though he grew up accustomed to a mixed church environment, he was called to religious life at Subiaco, where he is the only black monk. He came in 2004 and made final profession two years later.

“We work on it constantly,” Brother Dominic said of bridging the divides between not only culture, but age. He is 39 and many monks at Subiaco are older.

“It’s a big transition, it’s a big difference … just being able to understand people from different cultural perspectives. There’s a way that African Americans speak to one another … we have that shared history, so to speak. African Americans are naturally expressive. Sometimes that expression or passion we exhibit when speaking on things can give the wrong perspective of, ‘Oh he’s an angry person.’”

However, he has found his home at Subiaco.

“Why am I here? The reason has always been God has called me,” he said. “For what purpose? Who knows, but I would not change it at all.”

It’s a calling that Sister Michaela Marie Boucaud, OSB, knows all too well, as the only black sister at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith. In June, Sister Michaela made her first profession.

“God has called me into service as a Benedictine monastic and by his grace I responded,” she said. She was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and while she is not American-born, she immigrated to Brooklyn in her teens with her family.

“The path was circuitous from the get-go,” said Sister Michaela, 60, who will take her final vows in 2018. 

“I feel very fortunate in that my sisters at St. Scholastica were able to put aside whatever individual prejudices they may have had and collectively, listened with the ear of their hearts and admitted me as a junior professed sister.”

Though she found her home in Arkansas, Sister Michaela said not every religious order around the country is so welcoming. 

“Based on my experiences and observations I believe one main reason so few black women enter religious communities, it is not because they are not applying but because of what I call the ‘closed door’ policy practiced by vocation directors,” she said. “I have observed that this policy is very similar to the racial profiling and stereotyping practices in the secular world. At the same time one could question that if a person has an authentic vocation, why would God not grant her the grace to withstand these human obstacles?”

Sister Kibeho Straham, formerly of Christ the King Church in Little Rock, said following a call to religious life and not seeing many black religious sisters was something she had to look past. 

“Even within the black Catholic community we don’t see black Catholic sisters. When you don’t see a sister you can relate to, it’s harder to realize, ‘Oh that’s something God should be calling me to,’” Sister Kibeho said, adding some people told her “black people don’t become sisters … I don’t know if it’s something that’s cultural — It’s just not something that’s talked about, becoming priests and sisters.”

Before joining the Servants of the Lord and Virgin of Matara, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma in 2014.

“I was sitting in front of the Blessed Sacrament and this feeling just came over me that ‘you were made for more.’ It was really in that moment I was like OK. I hadn’t asked God what his plan was for my life,” Sister Kibeho, 22, said.

She chose her name after Our Lady of Kibeho, a Marian apparition in Rwanda.

“I felt drawn to the sorrowful mother, the image of Mary that has compassion and suffering with people and the connection that she has to Africa,” Sister Kibeho said. “The Church is alive and growing and really beautiful in Africa.” 

Though Sister Kibeho said she has now met black sisters and her order is an ethnically diverse environment, she is the only black sister in the women’s branch of her order, which is more than 1,000.

However, it never deterred her call to religious life, adding that her fellow sisters are her family. “My parents raised me to just know, ‘Yes I’m going to be in these situations and you just can’t focus on that,’” she said. “Everything can’t be determined by the color of your skin.”

Within the Church in Arkansas, Father Warren Harvey became a groundbreaker by simply following God’s call to the priesthood. As the diocese’s first and only black priest, he was walking a path he rarely saw other African Americans following.

As a child, he attended a now-closed black parish in Conway called Church of the Good Shepherd, with his father and 13 siblings and attended a Baptist church with his mother. But it wasn’t until he was about 12 years old that he saw a large black congregation on a trip to Kansas City with his brother and older sister.

“I remember thinking, is this a Catholic church?” Father Harvey said. “This is crazy, look at these people they are really Catholic and they’re black.”

Soon after, the black Catholic movement in the United States took shape in the late 1960s after Pope Paul VI attended an international conference in Africa and spoke about the need for black Catholics to step up.

But it wasn’t until he was in his 20s attending a meeting in Chicago of the National Office for Black Catholics that he believed black Catholics could follow religious life.

“There were hundreds of black Catholics, a choir of about 100 people, all black Catholics,” he said. “I loved the priest that was the homilist, Father Giles Conwill, from Atlanta. I’d been thinking about becoming a preacher, but I didn’t know any black priests … seeing Father Giles Conwill, I could be that.”

He spoke with another black priest at the meeting about vocation to the priesthood and coupled with later being involved with a race-relations college program in the Diocese of Little Rock called Cross Cultural Impact where he met another black priest, Father Harvey followed God’s call and entered the seminary in 1982. His mother thought for sure he’d be forced to go to Africa if he became a priest. His father also was not initially on board.

“They had never known a black priest,” he said. “My dad’s thing, he looked at me with a frown and said, ‘Son, I don’t think we do that.’ What do you mean? ‘Black people don’t do that.’”

He realized just how big of an impact his priesthood could mean for Catholics in Arkansas after speaking with his rector Father John C Favalora, now the retired archbishop of Miami.

“He said, ‘Well, let me just tell you, being the first, you’re going to be like the point of the plow. When it hits the ground, the point gets all the rocks and the roots and the rough places, but never forget you’re plowing the ground for someone else to follow,’” Father Harvey said, adding he then didn’t shy away from his black culture. “My style is different, having attended both Catholic and Baptist churches growing up, my preaching style … I like singing a lot because that’s what we do in a black church.”

He was ordained May 28, 1988. For 27 years, Father Harvey has been bishop’s liaison for the Diocesan Council of Black Catholics. He served 24 years as district chaplain for the Knights of Peter Claver, which included serving Oklahoma and Tennessee. It has given him countless opportunities to draw in black youth, saying once, “Well, I’m getting older. And one day I’m going to get older and die and somebody has to replace me. You know where they got me from? It wasn’t on eBay. I came from where you’re sitting right now and stepped up to the plate. And I need somebody to step up to the plate after me.”

Father Harvey said while seeing black people in religious life is important, drawing more young people to get rooted in Church activities and having more diversity visible in a church, including artwork and statues, also plays a role.

“I talk about vocations especially during black Catholic gatherings,” he said, saying that he’s encouraging black men he knows to apply to the diocese’s new diaconate class. “They’re giving it some thought.”

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