QUINCY — A panel of priests and a Quincy historian will consider the church's cause for sainthood for Father Augustus Tolton, who was born a slave and became the nation's first African American priest, beginning at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 8, in St. Boniface Church, at Seventh and Maine in Quincy. The event will be sponsored by the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.

Panelists will include Father Roy Bauer, retired pastor of St. Peter Parish and author of They Called Him Father Gus, a book about Father Tolton; Father Joseph Zimmerman, OFM, emeritus professor of Sociology at Quincy University; and Father Peter Harman, a Quincy native and now pastor of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Springfield. David Costigan, emeritus professor of history at Quincy University, will moderate the program.

In addition to his book about Father Tolton, Father Bauer recently published a book, We Have Been Led, a history of St. Peter Church, which includes a segment on Father Tolton.

Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, announced on March 17, 2010, that the cause for sainthood for Father Tolton had been introduced in the Archdiocese of Chicago. He appointed a commission to assemble facts over what is expected to be a decade-long process toward canonization, or sainthood, for Tolton.

"Father Tolton lived courageously in the midst of (racial) prejudice with the help of some Catholic priests, religious sisters and laity," George wrote. "The introduction of his cause now gives the church as a whole the opportunity to affirm his courage and enable him, long after his death, to take his place in our history and our prayers."

Father Tolton was born to slave parents in 1854 in Brush Creek, Mo. During the Civil War, his mother escaped with her children to the free state of Illinois and settled in Quincy. Though no seminary in the United States would accept him, the young Tolton studied for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained there in 1886.

After his ordination, Father Tolton served in Quincy, in what was then the Alton Diocese, until he was sent to Chicago in 1889. There he ministered to the black Catholic community until his death in 1897, at age 43. At his request, his body was returned to Quincy and is buried in St. Peter Cemetery.