Slattery, John

Slattery, John (Richard)

(1851–1926) Catholic religious leader; born in New York City. Heir to a construction company fortune, he was ordained as a Mill Hill Father (1877). In 1884 he became a missionary among African-Americans in the Richmond, Va., area. As rector of a Boston seminary (from 1888) and founder of the Josephite Fathers (1892), he trained other priests for such missionary work. A progressive concerned with the material as well as the religious needs of blacks, he was stung by the 1899 Vatican condemnation of "Americanism" and in 1906 he left the priesthood, becoming an attorney.