Bowman, Sister Thea (Bertha Elizabeth)

Impact on the world

Earned a PhD in English and linguistics from the Catholic University of America before building a career as one of the most sought-after Catholic evangelists in the country, preaching, singing, and teaching at as many as 100 venues nationwide each year to advocate for the full inclusion of Black culture and spirituality within a predominantly white American Catholic Church; in 1989, dying of breast cancer and confined to a wheelchair, she delivered an address to the full U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on race and justice so moving that it reportedly brought many of the assembled bishops to tears, and her cause for sainthood was formally opened by the Diocese of Jackson in 2018.

Life & background

Born Bertha Elizabeth Bowman in Yazoo City, Mississippi and raised in Canton as the only child of an middle-aged physician father and teacher mother, Bowman converted to Catholicism as a child after being drawn to what she saw as the genuine, active love and care Catholic sisters and missionaries showed toward the poor in her community; at 15 she left Mississippi to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Wisconsin, an unusual and difficult path for a Black teenager from the Jim Crow South to choose. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Viterbo College and a master's and doctorate in English and linguistics from the Catholic University of America, teaching at the college level before returning to her home state in the early 1980s to serve as Director of Intercultural Awareness for the Diocese of Jackson, where she worked to bridge Black culture and Catholic worship traditions that had often kept the two separate. Combining scholarship with an electrifying gift for preaching, singing, and storytelling, she became a nationally known evangelist who traveled to roughly 100 venues a year advocating for the full inclusion of Black spirituality, music, and culture within Catholic worship, work that continued even after a 1984 breast cancer diagnosis that ultimately confined her to a wheelchair. In June 1989, weakened by illness, she addressed the full body of U.S. Catholic bishops directly on issues of race and justice within their own church, an appearance widely remembered as one of the most powerful of her life and one that visibly moved many bishops present to tears; she died less than a year later, in March 1990, and is buried in Memphis beneath a tombstone bearing the simple inscription she herself chose: 'She tried.' Her cause for Catholic sainthood was formally opened by the Diocese of Jackson in 2018, advancing her toward potential recognition as the fifth African American candidate currently on the path to canonization.

Sources

1. Viterbo University (Biography and Legacy of Sr. Thea Bowman); USCCB (On the Road to Sainthood); Washington Post; LA Catholics