Bishop Joseph Perry has been following the Church’s missionary work — and Maryknoll — for most of his life.
After conferring the sacrament of Holy Orders upon Father Victor Mutobera at Maryknoll on June 6, the emeritus auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago discussed mission, his own vocation, immigration, racism and Pope Leo XIV, as well as the cause for canonization of Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, the first recognized African American priest from the United States.
“Being missionary is indigenous to the whole notion of priesthood,” Bishop Perry says. “There has to be the whole notion of missionary in every priest’s imagination. It’s just that some do it more professionally than others.”
The prelate has been reading Maryknoll magazine since grade school: “I remember the earliest days of my own vocational search as a kid; I imagined myself as a missionary in a canoe going down the Amazon River.”
He now enjoys a friendship with Maryknoll priests and seminarians in Chicago, where he grew up.
While his vocation did not lead him to foreign mission, Bishop Perry says there are “different degrees” of being a missioner.
“More and more, I think we’ve come to understand that even parish urban ministry is very missionary these days,” he says. “There are some phenomenal places in the world, even the developing world, where the faith is even stronger than that in some of our cities.”
Africa, where many of Maryknoll’s current seminarians come from, is one of those areas, he notes.
The Church is strong there, he says, “maybe because they don’t have as many distractions, and they’re not wealthy, but they are wealthy in terms of spirituality and charity, and even people who have, in many places, had to suffer for the faith.”
Bishop Perry, who was ordained for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in 1975 and appointed auxiliary bishop for Chicago in 1998, says he hopes and prays such vocations continue. He lamented, however, that the United States immigration system isn’t more receptive of them.
“We just hope that somehow our system here can be a little bit more generous and open, and, as such, that people can appreciate that the education that these guys receive from here is very, very valuable and enriching for them,” he says. “And, of course, we pick up something from them in light of their culture, their faith, their struggle.”
Bishop Perry, a canon lawyer who has taught at several Catholic universities, is the postulator for the sainthood cause of Father Augustus Tolton, who was ordained in Rome in 1886. Father Tolton ministered at churches in Quincy, Illinois, and Chicago. In 2019, Pope Francis declared Father Tolton venerable, the second step in the canonization process.
“So, we’re now in that quiet phase of looking for a miracle that would get him beatified,” Bishop Perry says.
Father Tolton was born into slavery in Missouri and, as a child, was taken to Illinois, a free state, by his mother, who fled with her children across the Mississippi River to freedom during the Civil War. There, he was educated in Catholic schools, including by Franciscans who saw he had a possible religious vocation.
“In those days, they didn’t accept Black students in seminaries and convents,” in the United States, the bishop says, so the Franciscans arranged for him to study in Rome.
“He was in Rome for six years, and they were going to send him to Africa to be a missionary there,” Bishop Perry says. “They perceived that he couldn’t be a success here in this country, because no one had ever seen a Roman collar around the neck of a Black man before.” However, the night before Father Tolton was to be ordained, the cardinal in charge of his assignment decided that the new priest should be a missionary in his own country.
Father Tolton suffered greatly from discrimination during his ministry in Quincy. People resisted the idea of a Black clergyman serving both white and Black Catholics, Bishop Perry says. Father Tolton was forced to leave Quincy and went to serve in Chicago, working with Black Catholics there.
The bishop says that he first learned of Father Tolton in seminary and identifies with him as an African American priest.
“I identify him with a lot,” he says. “He was thrust into a situation where he was really alone. He didn’t have support in those days.”
Bishop Perry notes that Father Tolton is “recognized” as the first African American priest because earlier, three African American priests who were of light complexion — brothers of the same family, with the last name of Healy — had passed as white.
Bishop Perry speaks about Father Tolton and his cause for canonization frequently, especially to those asking in prayer for his intercession, and is seeking the miracle that would lead to beatification.
Of Pope Leo XIV’s recent apology for the Church’s having in the past legitimized slavery, Bishop Perry says, “I think it’s good for people to hear that apology.” He adds, “Now we have a social teaching, a compendium of social teaching, where that is just not, at least in theory, not tolerated.”
He continues, “We hope that things in the future will get even better, but sometimes with certain awful incidents that occur, it makes you wonder how much progress we’ve really made.”
At the same time, he says, he remains hopeful, adding that we need to “see the gifts that people bring and not so much their intrusion upon our way of life.”
Featured image: Bishop Joseph Perry, emeritus auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago (Octavio Durán/U.S.)
