Today in our History June 10, 1854 - James Augustine Healy ordained a priest.

GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion was an American Roman Catholic priest and the second bishop of Portland, Maine; he was the first bishop in the United States of any known African descent.

Born in Georgia to a mixed-race slave mother and Irish immigrant father, he identified and was accepted as white Irish American, as he was half Irish and majority European ancestry. When he was ordained in 1854, his mixed-race ancestry was not widely known outside his mentors in the Catholic Church. (Augustus Tolton, a former slave who was publicly known to be black when ordained in 1886, is sometimes credited as the first black Catholic priest in the U.S.)

He was one of nine mixed-race siblings of the Catholic Healy family of Georgia who survived to adulthood and achieved many "firsts" in United States history. He is credited with greatly expanding the Catholic church in Maine at a time of increased Irish immigration; he also served Abenaki people and many parishioners of French Canadian descent who were traditionally Catholic. He spoke both English and French.

Remember – ''I am consoled to think that nobody has ever taken me for a secessionist. I puzzled over this statement knowing that he, as a former slave and a patriotic citizen, would never have aligned himself with the secessionists of the Confederate states.” - Rev. ALBERT S. FOLEY

Today in our History June 10, 1854 - James Augustine Healy ordained a priest in 1854.

James Augustine Healy, (born April 6, 1830, near Macon, Georgia, U.S.—died August 5, 1900, Portland, Maine), first African American Roman Catholic bishop in the United States and an advocate for children and Native Americans.

Healy was one of 10 children born on a Georgia cotton plantation to an Irish immigrant and his common-law wife, a mixed-race slave. Because Healy and his siblings were legally considered illegitimate and slaves, they were barred from attending school in the state, and their parents were forced to send the boys to schools in the North.

After encountering racial prejudice at their first school in Long Island, New York, Healy and his brothers completed their education in Massachusetts. In 1849 Healy was the valedictorian of the first graduating class of Holy Cross College. His brother Patrick, who also attended Holy Cross, became the first African American to earn a Ph.D.; he was later president of Georgetown University.

After college Healy attended seminary in Montreal and in Paris and was ordained a priest in 1854. He did mission work in Boston, where he opposed state anti-Catholic laws. He then served as chancellor of the diocese and, during the Civil War, as secretary to the bishop. He was made pastor of St. James Church in Boston in 1866 and was appointed bishop of Portland by Pope Pius IX in 1875.

As bishop (1875–1900), he faced anti-Catholic sentiment but doubled the Catholic population of his diocese, which included Maine and New Hampshire, and increased the number of priests significantly; this growth led to the division of the diocese in two in 1885. During his reign, Healy established numerous churches, schools, convents, and welfare institutions. A tireless advocate for Civil War widows and orphans, he purchased part of an island near Portland to use as a vacation site for children.

He was a leader of the American bishops who proposed three decrees that were approved in 1884 by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, which was empowered to legislate for all ecclesiastical provinces in the country. In recognition of his support for Native Americans, Healy was made a consultant to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. On his 25th anniversary as a bishop, he was named assistant to the papal throne, a position only one step below cardinal in the church hierarchy.

Although an advocate for the less fortunate, Healy never took up specifically African American issues, and he even turned down invitations to speak to African American Catholic groups. Research more abbot this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!