Religion: In Harlem

A holy flash of black struck at Negro Harlem last week, like a taffeta ribbon across a naughty face. Pagan blackamoors ceased their capers and their vices, to grace the passage of a band of Negro nuns, the Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, who, showing a quaint solemnity, were opening their new chapel to the Negroes.

The Right Rev. Thomas M. O'Keefe, pastor of the Church of St. Benedict the Moor, presided at the opening; and many another white priest assisted. God might look like Monsignor O'Keefe, thought many a Negro child newly inducted into Catholicism, but surely the Holy Spirit was like Mother Superior M. Theodore of the Handmaids. Her order of black nuns was founded at Savannah, Ga., only nine years ago to show the beauties of their Church to Negroes. But when the centre of Negro immorality, by Church definition, definitely shifted to Harlem, the Mother House of the new order was also brought there. The Roman Catholic Church considers Negroes "the humble members of Christ's Church." And it prefers not to leave them entirely to their Protestant churches, in which "a diluted Christianity, by essence drab and drear and emasculated, has been made feverish with the emotionalism of experience meetings, revivals and raucous-voiced hymns."— So white priests have, for a half-century, been urged by their bishops to work among the Negroes. Roman Catholics do not urge blackamoors to join their Church. But they do, by exquisite example, show the worth of life within the Faith. And, although the Negro "lot can on earth never be equal with those about them," still Negro boys can become Roman Catholic priests and Negro girls can join their special orders —the Handmaids of the Pure Heart of Mary, or the Oblate Sisters who do whatever work they may be told to do, or the Holy Family Sisters. It is not beyond theory that a Negro may become Pope, even though the Pope be chosen by weighty, ancient precedent. Moreover, not beyond fact is sainthood. There are two Negro saints. The better known is St. Benedict the Moor (called also the Blackamoor, the Black, the Negro). His parents were slaves in Sicily 400 years ago, and, proud, they refused to conceive children unless their master promised their first-born freedom. Thus was St. Benedict prenatally free. At 21 he joined the order of hermits of St. Francis. One day when the friars could not get food, because of a heavy fall of snow, Benedict filled several large vessels with water, and prayed all night to God. Next morning the water was full of fishes. Pope Pius VII (1800-23) canonized him.†

*OUR NUNS — Rev. Daniel A. Lord S. J. — Benziger (1924).

†The other acknowledged black saint is Moyses the Ethiopian (4th Century). St. Augustine (354-430) with Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory the Great, a Father of the Church, is presumed by many believers to have been a Negro. He was born at Tagaste in Numidia (Northern Africa).