A painting depicts Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, the world’s first sustained women’s religious community for Black women. Pope Francis signed a decree June 22 recognizing her heroic virtues and declaring her “venerable.” (OSV News photo/courtesy Catholic Review)
By OSV News
Little is known about the early life of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, whom Pope Francis declared “venerable” June 22. However, it is possible she may become one of the United States’ first Black Catholic saints.
Likely of what today is Haitian ethnicity, Mother Lange — born Elizabeth Clarisse Lange — emigrated from Cuba shortly after the War of 1812 and made her way to Baltimore, where she ran a school for African-American children in her home. Sulpician Father James Joubert had been instructing Sunday school for Black Catholic children and recognized that many of them, particularly girls, were unable to read or write.
Because of this, he sought to open a school for girls and asked Lange and another woman to not only operate the school, but also to start a religious order to staff the school. With that, the Oblate Sisters of Providence were born in 1829. Under the leadership of Mother Lange, their mission grew from simply running schools to offering career development classes for women and to operating homes for widows and orphans.
At the time, Maryland was a state where legalized slavery of Black Americans had also infected the Catholic Church and compromised its witness. In 1838 — at the same time that Mother Lange was giving authentic witness to Jesus Christ’s Gospel by carrying out her educational ministry to Black young people — the Maryland Jesuits sold 272 Black Catholics, enslaved to them, to plantation owners in Louisiana in order to save Georgetown University from bankruptcy.
“She was determined to respond to that need in spite of being a black woman in a slave state long before the Emancipation Proclamation,” according to the official website of her sainthood cause. “She used her own money and home to educate children of color.”
Slavery would be abolished in Maryland officially only in 1864, during the U.S. Civil War, under a new state constitution. It would take another century of struggle, however, for Black Americans to achieve legal equality in the state.
Mother Lange died in her 90s on Feb. 3, 1882, at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, which she founded. The school today is owned and operated by the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
“Mother Mary Lange practiced faith to an extraordinary degree,” Mother Lange’s sainthood cause website states. “In fact, it was her deep faith which enabled her to persevere against all odds. To her Black brothers and sisters she gave of herself and her material possessions until she was empty of all but Jesus, whom she shared generously with all by being a living witness to his teaching.”
In 1991, Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore opened an investigation into Mother Lange’s life. In 2004, documents describing Mother Lange’s life were sent to the Holy See, and the then-Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the cause for her sainthood. In 2013, the Oblate Sisters transferred her remains from New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore to Our Lady of Mount Providence Convent Chapel at their motherhouse nearby.
In February, the Oblate Sisters received news that the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints had approved the cause’s “positio” — the documentation on the life of Mother Lange, which includes both the theological and historical record of her life.
“Venerable” is a declaration of a sainthood candidate’s heroic virtues. Next would come beatification, after which Mother Lange would be called “Blessed.” The third step is canonization in which she would be recognized as a saint. In general, the last two steps each require a miracle attributed to the intercession of the sainthood candidate and verified by the church.
Mother Lange is one of six Black American Catholics who have been declared venerable or servants of God. The others who have been declared venerable are Mother Henriette Delille, a free woman of color who founded the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans; Father Augustus Tolton, the first publicly recognized African American priest ordained for the U.S. Catholic Church; and Pierre Toussaint, a Haitian American brought to New York City under slavery, who became a free man, hairdresser and philanthropist known for his generosity. Those denoted servants of God are Sister Thea Bowman, the first African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and founder of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans; and Julia Greeley, known as the city of Denver’s “Angel of Charity.”
Michael R. Heinlein, Catholic News Service, CNS Rome, and OSV News national news and features editor Peter Jesserer Smith contributed to this report.
