The Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, this week officially closed its proceedings regarding the potential sainthood of Servant of God Sister Mary Thea Bowman, a Catholic convert whose work during the 20th century helped the U.S. Catholic Church refine its ministry toward Black American Catholics.
Jackson Bishop Joseph Kopacz celebrated a Mass on Feb. 9 as part of the closing ceremony of the diocesan phase of Bowman’s cause for canonization.
The diocese, which opened Bowman’s cause in 2018, officially sealed the documents and other materials it gathered over the course of that phase; the records will be sent to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican.
“This moment marks an important milestone in the Church’s careful and prayerful discernment of Sister Thea Bowman’s witness to the Gospel,” Kopacz said prior to the ceremony.
“Her life continues to inspire faith, hope, and joy, not only within our diocese but throughout the Church in the United States and beyond,” he said.
Born Dec. 29, 1937, in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Bowman — whose grandfather had been born into slavery — converted from Methodism to the Catholic Church when she was 9 years old.
She joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at age 15, enrolling at the same time in Viterbo University, which was run by the Franciscan sisters. The school retains its Catholic identity in the present day.
While studying at The Catholic University of America — from which she earned a doctorate in English in 1972 — Bowman helped found the National Black Sisters’ Conference. She would go on to teach for years in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
She was a major contributor to the development of “Lead Me, Guide Me,” the Black Catholic hymnal first published in 1987.
She would eventually become known for her wide-ranging evangelization efforts; theology professor Christopher Pramuk wrote in 2014 that she “awakened a sense of fellowship in people both within and well beyond the Catholic world,” in part because of her “willingness to speak the truth about racial injustice” both in the Church and in society.
Addressing the U.S. bishops’ conference in 1989 and reflecting on “what it means to be Black in the Church and in society,” Bowman famously sang several lines from the Negro spiritual “Motherless Child” while declaring: “Jesus told me that the Church is my home.”
Regularly invoking laughter and applause from the bishops, Bowman during her talk reflected that the Church “teaches us that the Church is a family of families” and “the family got to stay together.”
Bowman died on March 30, 1990, from breast cancer. She was buried at
Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside her parents.
