Healy, James Augustine

Healy, James Augustine

(1830–1900) Catholic prelate; born in Jones County, Ga. The son of a black slave woman and white plantation owner, he graduated from Holy Cross College (1849) and was ordained in Paris (1854). After serving as a pastor and administrator in the Boston archdiocese, he was named bishop of Portland, Maine (1875). The nation's first African-American Catholic bishop, though not widely known as such, he was an effective orator, builder of churches, and benefactor of the needy.