News - Building Bridges:
An Ongoing Series on Racial Harmony RSS Feed

The historical roots of the Black America are intimately intertwined with those of Catholic America. As Black American and Black Catholic it is time for us to reclaim our roots and to shoulder the responsibilities of being both Black and Catholic.

Members of the African American Catholic Community of the Diocese of Baton Rouge have expressed their concern of not being able share their gift of blackness in their African American parishes. Because of our commitment as the Office of Black Catholics and living out our baptismal call, we are voicing their concerns so as to feel like the Catholic Church is a homeland for all people.

I am so happy and joyful to see, in my life time, that Black Catholics men and women are on the way to becoming saints. These brothers and sisters show us how to persevered in the midst of racism and rejection.

A Baton Rouge area native participated in a Glenmary Home Missioners’ pilgrimage through Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee that presented the realities of the struggles the African American community have historically faced. The pilgrims prayed at sites significant to the slavery era and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s and met with contemporary community workers.

As a synod meeting with the Hispanic community drew to a close, Bishop Michael G. Duca bowed his head and simply said, “I need you to bless me.” 

I was raised as a cradle Catholic, the oldest of eight children born to my parents, Joseph Vallery Will and Jeanne Elizabeth Stadeker Will. I attended St. Augustine Elementary School in New Roads through the fourth grade, taught by the Holy Spirit Sisters and Mary Immaculate of San Antonio, Texas, whose charism was to serve the social and educational needs of the African American community. 

Juneteenth, which is celebrated June 19, is a time for African Americans to visit the past, to learn where they have come from and find inner freedom by embracing God’s call to become the people God called them to be, say clergy of the Diocese of Baton Rouge.

Just off busy Harding Street, near the entrance to Southern University, Immaculate Conception Church rises as a beacon of light and warmth for the Scotlandville/Baton Rouge community.  

Julie Gianelloni, a former employee of the US Foreign Service reflects on a valuable lesson she learned early in her career.

Immigration has recently appeared in the news as a hot-button issue. People have become bitterly divided whether, and how, we should welcome immigrants into our country.

Americans, too, can persevere. With humanity and civility in our hearts, we will overcome what divides us. 

The Racial Harmony Commission of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, in collaboration with the Southern University Law Center, the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University, the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University, sponsored a virtual lecture by Dr. Shannen Dee Williams, Professor of History at Villanova University.

"My first real memory of personally experiencing racism was when I was one of about 20 Black girls to integrate St. Anthony Catholic High School, a small and previously all-white, all-girls’ school in north Baton Rouge. "

Communities of color have known for years what the media began to devote more attention to during the COVID-19 pandemic this past year: that there are disturbing health disparities between white and non-white Americans. 

When enough people say, “enough is enough,” and “we the people” work to change policies and procedures that exclude and hurt, then change will happen.

Bishop Fabre hopes that racial unity is not just a dream but can be reality that calls for equality reaching across racial, cultural and even geographical divides that are finally being heard.