When Carl Stokes won a partial scholarship to Loyola High School in the 1960s, there was no way his family could make up the difference.
Not to fear: His parish priest, a Josephite at St. Francis Xavier in East Baltimore, made sure all expenses were covered.
"If you had the ability, they would make sure that you got all the tools and the educational opportunities to go to the next level," said Stokes, 46, a former Baltimore City councilman and lifetime member of St. Francis.
Stokes' story is one of many that will be shared as the Josephites celebrate their 125th anniversary today, with Cardinal William H. Keeler presiding at a 5 p.m. Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church, 1501 E. Oliver St., the country's oldest African-American Roman Catholic parish. A reception and banquet will follow at the Baltimore Convention Center.
The events mark the 1871 founding of St. Joseph's Society of the Sacred Heart in London, which sent white priests to Baltimore that same year to staff African-American Catholic parishes and schools. They assumed control of St. Francis Xavier and in 1892 became a separate American order to concentrate on their work among blacks, many of them freed slaves.
St. Francis Xavier spawned seven other parishes for African-Americans in Baltimore. St. Monica's and Sacred Heart are defunct, but still operating are St. Peter Claver in Sandtown-Winchester; St. Pius V in Harlem Park, which merged with St. Barnabas; and St. Veronica's in Cherry Hill. Christ the King in Dundalk was turned over to the archdiocese.
These were the only parishes blacks attended until the 1950s, when they felt accepted at Baltimore's other Catholic churches, said the Rev. Peter E. Hogan, the Josephite archivist.
Though in decline in recent years, the order has continued to play a significant role in education, housing, the rehabilitation of drug addicts and alcoholics and other pursuits, say local religious and civic leaders.
"Black Catholics have always seen the Josephites as somebody who could go to the pope and the bishops for us," said Sister Claudina Sanz, superior general of the 168-year-old Oblate Sisters, a group of African American nuns founded here.
The Rev. Robert M. Kearns, the superior general of the Josephites, led the effort to raise money to build new and renovated homes under the Nehemiah project. His appeal to a variety of religious groups -- synagogues and black and white Protestant churches -- netted $2.2 million in pledges that leveraged millions more in federal, state and city dollars.
