On Saturday, Nov 3, Tolton: From Slave to Priest is a new live theater production based on the life of Fr. Augustus Tolton, the first African American Catholic priest will be performed at the Cintas Center on the Xavier University Campus at 3:00 p.m.

On Sunday, November 4, the production moves to the University of Dayton in the Kennedy Union Ballroom at 3:00 p.m.

Both performances have free admission!

Augustine Tolton, was the first Roman Catholic priest in the United States publicly known to be black when he was ordained in 1886. (James Augustine Healy, ordained in 1854, and Patrick Francis Healy, ordained in 1864, were of mixed-race.) A former slave who was baptized and reared Catholic, Tolton studied formally in Rome.

He was ordained in Rome on Easter Sunday of 1886 at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. Assigned to the diocese of Alton (now the Diocese of Springfield), Tolton first ministered to his home parish in Quincy, Illinois. Later assigned to Chicago, Tolton led the development and construction of St. Monica’s Catholic Church as a black “national parish church”, completed in 1893 at 36th and Dearborn Streets on Chicago’s South Side.

For more information, contact Deacon Royce Winters at [email protected] or (513) 421-3131 ext. 2640 or check out www.toltondrama.com