James Augustine Healy, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

James Augustine Healy

American Roman Catholic bishop

Date of Birth: 06-Apr-1830

Place of Birth: Georgia, United States

Date of Death: 05-Aug-1900

Profession: Catholic priest

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Aries

James Augustine Healy (April 6, 1830 – August 5, 1900) was an American Roman Catholic priest and the second bishop of Portland, Maine; he was the first bishop in the United States of any known African descent.
Born in Georgia to a mixed-race slave mother and Irish immigrant father, he identified and was accepted as white Irish American, as he was half Irish and majority European ancestry.
When he was ordained in 1854, his mixed-race ancestry was not widely known outside his mentors in the Catholic Church.
(Augustus Tolton, a former slave who was publicly known to be black when ordained in 1886, is sometimes credited as the first black Catholic priest in the U.S.) Healy was one of nine mixed-race siblings of the Catholic Healy family of Georgia who survived to adulthood and achieved many "firsts" in United States history.
He is credited with greatly expanding the Catholic church in Maine at a time of increased Irish immigration; he also served Abenaki people and many parishioners of French Canadian descent who were traditionally Catholic.
He spoke both English and French.