A First for Black Catholics

By Michael P. Harris

In their first pastoral letter, in 1984, the U.S.'s black Roman Catholic bishops politely but urgently expressed concern about the paucity of black leaders in the church. Last year a Washington conference of 1,250 black Catholics repeated the plea for more blacks who would actually run dioceses, as opposed to being auxiliaries under white bishops. During his pastoral visit to the U.S. in September, Pope John Paul II signaled that he was listening when he told a New Orleans gathering of black Catholics, "Know that the Pope stands united with the black community as it rises to embrace its full dignity and lofty destiny." The words were welcome enough, but last week came a more welcome result: to head the archdiocese of Atlanta, the Pope named the Most Rev. Eugene A. Marino, 53, making him the first black American ever to become an archbishop.

The choice of Marino seems almost foreordained. The new archbishop was one of the authors of the 1984 pastoral letter, an articulate participant in the Washington conference, and an organizer of the papal address to blacks. In his Washington speech last year, he reached back to his roots "as a young boy in Mississippi with the double -- I was going to say handicap, but I'll say blessing -- of being black and Catholic." His mother was from Biloxi, and his father, a baker, moved there from Puerto Rico. The young Marino grew up in a cultural and religious tradition derived from the early Catholic French and Spanish settlers, and he still lights up when he talks about Creole gumbos and rice. "I took in my faith like my mother's milk," he says. "Some of my earliest recollections are of my family kneeling around the bed praying to Mary, when I was too small even to be really a part of it."

It was a segregated society, including his parochial school. Marino's vocation was firmly established by high school, and despite the rarity of his choice, he persevered. "Diocesan seminaries -- all seminaries -- were difficult for blacks," he says with no apparent bitterness. In 1962 he was ordained in the Josephite order of priests, which was founded in the 19th century to serve blacks. Its leadership had always been white, but nine years later he became their vicar-general, or second-in-command, the first black to hold such an office in any religious order. Rome was noticing him. Marino was consecrated as a bishop in 1974 and assigned as an auxiliary in Washington. In 1985 he was elected secretary of the American bishops' national conference, a mark of considerable esteem from his colleagues.

As Marino acknowledges, blacks and Catholicism in the U.S. have never been completely at ease with each other. In the Republic's early days, blacks found more welcoming accommodation for their religious sensibilities in Protestant styles of worship and theology. Catholics, themselves strangers in a strange land, did not proselytize among slaves until they were freed after the Civil War. Today, only 5% of American blacks are Catholic, and the 1.5 million black Catholics make up 2.8% of the American church. Representation in the clergy is worse. The 350 black priests and 700 black nuns represent less than 1% of the total. In the hierarchy, twelve of 400 bishops are black.

Like all John Paul's choices, Marino is loyal to Vatican teaching, though he is no conservative hard-liner. As head of the Atlanta archdiocese, he will preside directly over some 156,000 Catholics, both in the city and in 69 northern Georgia counties. He also becomes metropolitan of an ecclesiastical province, with influence over four other dioceses in three states. The prelate has already indicated that, whatever his administrative tasks, his priorities will be pastoral. On a one-day trip from Washington to his new flock last week, he made a special effort in the midst of a hectic schedule to visit Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home, a nursing home for the free care of terminal cancer patients. "Once we put our trust in God when we didn't have a thing on earth," he reminds fellow blacks. "Now some of us have had achievements. But we can't forget the God who brings us salvation."

With reporting by Glenn Garelik/Washington and Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta