On a day when history was made 60 years earlier with the March on Washington, Father Robert Boxie III, the Catholic chaplain at Howard University in the nation’s capital, noted that the campus ministry program there was making history of its own, with the blessing and dedication of its new Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center.
“Today is an historic day, dedicating this new center,” Father Boxie said, of the building at 1901 Third Street, N.W. “It’s going to be a place for students to pray, to worship, to study, to meet, to fellowship, to socialize, even to cook – we have a kitchen – (it will be) a place to build community and grow in authentic friendship, and a place where we can be unabashedly young, Black, gifted and Catholic.”
Howard University, one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, was founded in 1867, and the Catholic campus ministry at Howard University, named HU Bison Catholic to reflect the nickname of the university’s sports teams, marked its 75th anniversary this past year.
Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory blessed and dedicated the new Catholic student center at Howard University, named for Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration and a dynamic evangelist and noted educator who died of cancer in 1990 and who is one of six Black Catholics from the United States being considered for sainthood.
“What a wonderful thing we do today to set aside this place as another house for God,” the cardinal said.
As he dedicated the center, Cardinal Gregory prayed, “We ask that the life of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman may inspire these young people to share their God-given gifts, rooted in the African American and African traditions, with the Church and on this campus.”
The new center is located in a semi-detached row home in Washington’s LeDroit Park neighborhood. According to Father Boxie, the home once belonged to General William Birney, a southern abolitionist who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Birney moved to Washington to establish a law practice.
Father Boxie opened the ceremony noting that “no event that involves Sister Thea Bowman is without music, is without singing a song,” and in homage to the woman religious who was known for her soaring singing voice, he led the students, alumni and guests in singing the spiritual, “We Have Come This Far by Faith.”
He introduced Cardinal Gregory, noting he is “the first African American cardinal in the history of the Roman Catholic Church,” and the people there applauded Washington’s archbishop, who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2020.
Also attending the ceremony was retired Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, who was thanked by Cardinal Gregory for helping to find financial support for the purchase of the building now housing the Catholic student center; and Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy Campbell Jr., the pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Largo. Bishop Campbell, who also serves as the president of the National Black Catholic Congress, offered a closing prayer at the ceremony. He is an alumnus of Howard University and studied zoology there.
The guests also included Redemptorist Father Maurice Nutt, the author of the book “Thea Bowman: Faithful and Free” who is a consultant to the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi for her canonization cause and was her student at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans. Father Nutt donated a large portrait of Sister Thea to the center, a print of a painting by Vernon Adams, a young Black Catholic artist from her home state of Mississippi.
Also attending the ceremony were several pastors of Washington parishes, members of the Knights of Peter Claver and that group’s Ladies Auxiliary, and representing Howard University was Dr. Leelannee Malin, its associate dean for community engagement and strategic partnerships.
Father Boxie said he especially wanted to acknowledge the presence of many Catholic students from Howard University, saying, “This is a day to celebrate you, and what God will be doing through you in this center.”
Offering an opening prayer, Elei Nkata, a Howard University junior from Nigeria who is majoring in computer science and is a co-president of the Catholic campus ministry there, asked God to “unite the hearts of every one of us that passes through here with your love and joy, and lead us to become the sons and daughters of faith you have called us to be.”
Another co-president of HU Bison Catholic, Loren Otoo – a junior from Ghana majoring in electrical engineering – noted that when he came to the university he sought a group where he could be connected to his Catholic faith, and he had found friends and “grown a lot in my spiritual journey” in the campus ministry program there. Another Howard University student, Cameron Humes, a junior from Birmingham, Alabama, majoring in political science, read a Scripture reading at the ceremony. He serves as the liturgy chair for the campus ministry program.
Ali Mumbach, the campus minister for HU Bison Catholic who is a graduate student working toward a master’s degree in sociology at Howard University and is also working toward a master’s degree in theology at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies, spoke on Sister Thea’s life and legacy.
“Sister Thea was a radiant disciple of Jesus Christ. People Catholic and not, Christian and not, were attracted to her exuberant spirit,” said Mumbach, who quoted part of a dramatic address that Sister Thea gave to the nation’s Catholic bishops in 1989, when she said that as a Black Catholic, “I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility – as gifts to the Church.”
The campus minister pointed out that Sister Thea has a special connection to Howard University, having spoken there after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The university’s new Catholic student center was being named after Sister Thea to honor her role as a Black Catholic leader, she said.
“We as Black people have gifts to share with the Church. This is a part of our ministry at Howard,” Mumbach said. “…In HU Bison Catholic, we are raising up and equipping the next Black Catholic leaders. We hope that this is the first of many Bowman Centers on HBCU campuses – that in the same way there are Newman Centers to remember and honor the great work of (St.) John Newman, we can celebrate, commemorate and carry on the legacy of Sister Thea Bowman.”
In his remarks at the dedication for the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center at Howard University, Father Boxie noted that the garage there will be converted to a space for the center’s chapel. “Jesus will be here on this block. It will be a space for Mass, for adoration, for prayer and for worship,” he said.
Noting that the dedication for the center was happening on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Father Boxie said Dr. King on that day in 1963 “shared his dream, his vision for the future of this country, where we could move beyond this racial caste system of inequality and injustice, and challenged us to live up to the ideals of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.”
Father Boxie also pointed out that the Aug. 28 ceremony was happening on the feast of St. Augustine, the fifth century African bishop who he said is “one of the world’s greatest minds,” and he added that the center’s library – with an extensive collection of religious books donated by Augustinian Father Joseph Wimmer from Villanova University – is named for the saint.
The Catholic chaplain also noted how Howard University has a special relationship with St. Augustine Parish, which was founded by free men and women of color including people emancipated from slavery in 1858 and is regarded as the mother church for Black Catholics in the nation’s capital. Over the years, many Howard University students, faculty members and graduates have been members of St. Augustine Parish, and in recent years, some students have received sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil there.
Also during the ceremony, Father Boxie shared his dreams for the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center, including that it be a place “where students come to encounter one another and Jesus Christ and be free to live out their Catholic faith, especially in the Black Catholic tradition,” and that it be a center of Catholic intellectual life and a place of prayer and vocational discernment on campus. “God is calling vocations in our community at Howard University,” he said.
And the priest said that community will pray for the canonization cause of its namesake, and he hopes that some day the center’s name will be changed, “to the Saint Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center.”
After the ceremony, Father Nutt, who wrote Sister Thea’s biography, said he was very moved that Howard University’s new Catholic student center was named for her.
“She was my teacher, my mentor and my spiritual mother,” he said. “…It was hard to hold back the tears, because I know how much this would mean to Sister Thea Bowman. She loved her time in Washington, D.C. It was here she became greatly aware of her identity of being Black and Catholic. She was inspired by the large number of Black Catholics in the archdiocese, and they welcomed her with open arms.”
He added, “I know she will inspire them (the students here) to share their gifts of Blackness, not only with Howard University, but with the whole Church.”
In Washington, Sister Thea Bowman earned a master’s and a doctorate degree in English from The Catholic University of America, and in 2022, a street at the campus was renamed as Sister Thea Bowman Drive. That same spring, Georgetown University renamed its chapel in Copley Hall after her.
After the ceremony, Ali Mumbach, the Catholic campus minister at Howard University, said, “I’m really glad we can continue the legacy of Sister Thea by naming the center after her. She did so much for Black Catholics and young people that we are picking up where she left off.”
Mumbach added, “The biggest thing about Sister Thea was, she was so authentically herself. Right now, we’re living in a time when people are more concerned about how they’re perceived and what they do than who they are. So I hope in learning about Sister Thea and her life and being in a space where they (students) can be themselves, they can discover who they truly are.”
Among the alumni attending the ceremony was Ron Jackson, who earned a master’s degree in social work from Howard University in 1975 and who now works as a senior director for government affairs for Catholic Charities USA. He said that when he came to Washington from Mississippi four decades ago, the Catholic campus ministry at Howard “was my first parish” in the nation’s capital. Seeing the new center there “is real sentimental for me,” he said.
Students active in HU Bison Catholic interviewed after the ceremony said they appreciated that the campus ministry there has a new home, and a special spiritual model in Sister Thea Bowman.
“To be in this Black Catholic space is such a unique blessing. It’s a space where you can 100 percent be your full Black sacred self,” said Regina Banks, a Howard University senior from Philadelphia majoring in African American studies. Banks, who serves as the campus ministry’s community service chair, noted their outreach partners with other organizations like Catholic schools, food banks and women’s shelters.
Noting how music was central to Sister Thea Bowman’s life and ministry, Banks added that being able to worship with African American spiritual songs offers “a deep connection you feel through your soul.”
Allyson Clarke, a Howard University graduate student from Grenada working toward a doctorate in higher education, said it was very meaningful to her that the Catholic campus ministry there now has a permanent home, because “we were jostled from space to space” in recent years.
“This is truly a monumental thing that the archdiocese is recognizing the importance that young Black Catholics need a space for fellowship, for spiritual direction and for friendship. This is a place of discovery for your faith,” Clarke said.
Myles Griffin, a junior from New Jersy majoring in political science at Howard University, said the new Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center there “is the beginning of something greater, something new, getting young people involved in the Church.”
Griffin praised Sister Thea for “her passion. Despite all the difficulties and trials she went through, she held firm in her faith, and that’s something we college students can learn from.”
Fiona Williams, a Howard University junior from Brooklyn majoring in chemistry, also expressed appreciation for the new Catholic student center. “For me, this day is a beautiful representation of what Black Catholicism is,” she said. Echoing Father Boxie’s words, she added, “Having this community on campus is so meaningful to me and my peers as a place (where you can be) unapologetically young, Black, gifted and Catholic.”
