VATICAN CITY - Father Augustus Tolton advanced along the path to sainthood Wednesday, making the runaway slave-turned-priest one step closer to being the first black American saint. Pope Francis ...

Since the emperor Augustus had no sons, he adopted his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, the sons of his only child Julia and his old friend and close associate Marcus Agrippa. The emperor was very ...

Father Augustus Tolton is considered, along with the Healy Brothers, among the very first African American priests in the United States. He had won his freedom first by flight and his priesthood by ...

A Vatican committee has unanimously voted to send the sainthood cause of Father Augustus Tolton, a former runaway slave and the first African American priest in the United States, to the next stage.

Augustus John Tolton, the second of three children, was born into slavery on April 1,1854 in Brush Creek, Missouri. He was baptized as Catholic since the Eliot family, the owners of the plantation, ...