Father Martin de Porres Ward, O.F.M. Conv.

A Pioneer Who Crossed Every Border

Matthias DeWitte Ward was born on March 20, 1918, in Charlestown, Boston, to an interracial couple at a time when such families faced extraordinary prejudice. Growing up Catholic in a segregated America, young Matthias experienced both the consolation of the faith and the sting of discrimination. Yet his vocation was clear from an early age.

He entered the Conventual Franciscan Friars Minor, becoming the first African American to join the order. When he was ordained a priest in 1955, he took the religious name Martin de Porres, honoring the Peruvian Dominican lay brother of mixed race who had been beatified just three years earlier and would be canonized in 1962.

Shortly after ordination, Father Ward was assigned to missionary work in Brazil. He would spend more than forty years there, serving as a teacher, pastor, and spiritual guide in communities that were often poor and remote. He became beloved by the people of the São João del Rei region, who saw in him a priest who understood suffering and who served without distinction of race or class.

Father Ward died on June 22, 1999, in Brazil. His cause for canonization was opened by the Diocese of São João del Rei and received Vatican approval in 2024. He is the seventh Black Catholic sainthood candidate from the United States, joining figures such as Venerable Augustus Tolton, Venerable Henriette Delille, and Servant of God Thea Bowman in a growing recognition of the holiness present in the African American Catholic experience.

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