Augustus Tolton, a former slave and considered the first African American to become a Roman Catholic priest, is now on the path to becoming the first African American to be canonized, almost 114 years after his death.

He may, at the same time, become the first Civil War-era U.S. saint.

Last Wednesday, during a public gathering in St. James Chapel at Chicago’s Quigley Center, Cardinal Francis E. George, and commission members, took an oath to carry out their duties for the cause of Tolton’s sainthood.

Ralph Basui Watkins, Ph.D., associate professor and dean of African American Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, is a minister at the First A.M.E. Church in Los Angeles. An unconventional preacher, he has taken excursions to Africa to seek out the truth about the religion he has followed so closely all of his life. When he began to investigate African spirituality and the roots of biblical texts, his discovery changed his perspective.