By Terry Dickson
Servant of God Thea Bowman’s journey to sainthood reached a major milestone recently as the diocesan phase of her canonization cause came to an end.
Bishop Joseph Kopacz was principal celebrant and homilist of a Feb. 9 Mass at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle in Jackson, which was followed by the closing session. Concelebrants included Archbishop Mark Rivituso and retired Archbishop Thomas Rodi of Mobile, Alabama, and Bishop Steven Raica and retired Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham, Alabama, as well as priests from the Diocese of Jackson and neighboring dioceses.
Sister Thea (1937–1990) was an African American Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, educator, evangelist and dynamic witness to the Catholic faith. Born Bertha Elizabeth Bowman in Canton, Mississippi, she converted to Catholicism at age nine and later joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in 1953, becoming the only African American member of her community at the time.
A gifted scholar, Sister Thea earned a doctorate in English from The Catholic University of America and became a passionate advocate for intercultural awareness, racial justice, and the full participation of African Americans in the Catholic Church. Known for her joyful spirit, powerful speaking voice, and commitment to integrating African American spiritual traditions into Catholic worship, she inspired audiences across the country—even while battling cancer. In 2018, the Church formally opened her cause for canonization, giving her the title “Servant of God.”
“Here we are seven years plus later to mark another sacred moment on the journey with this Mass of Thanksgiving to officially close the diocesan phase for the Cause,” Bishop Kopacz remarked during his homily. “In between, there was the joy over the creation of the documentary film that preserves her extraordinary story for all to view and cherish, and the forging of her bronze statue that stands in the foreground of our cathedral.”
Bishop Kopacz was referring to the documentary “Going Home Like a Shooting Star: Thea Bowman’s Journey to Sainthood,” a 2022 film which was produced by Franciscan Sister Judith Ann Zielinski, who is based in Sylvania, Ohio. The bronze statue of Sister Thea, which Bishop Kopacz dedicated in 2024, was created by Mary Ott Davidson, a parishioner of St. Joseph Parish in Gulfport, Mississippi.
“The documentary film unfolds her inspiring story beyond the limits of the diocese, and the statue anchors her here at the heart of the diocese, like a Lady Liberty welcoming all people who cross the threshold of the Cathedral to know the freedom through faith in Jesus Christ,” Bishop Kopacz said, likening the stretch between the opening and closing Masses for Sister Thea’s cause to the creation story.
“I think about the seven days of creation during which God brought all things into being while enjoying a day of rest at the end,” he continued. “There are many parallels with the process that we celebrate today, except for one major departure. The seventh year of this process was no day of rest at the beach. This was the final stretch of a marathon when runners are completing the race with Olympic effort.
“Ten boxes of bound documentation, historical and theological, had to be properly organized for the flight to Rome, a massive labor of love. During the ceremony following the Mass we will thank personally all who made this possible. Afterwards, they will rest on the eighth day, the day of the resurrection.”
Bishop Kopacz said Sister Thea was a gift to the Church from the moment she set foot in Holy Child School, and right up to the iconic moment when she addressed the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops at Seton Hall in 1989 toward the end of her life, a presentation available on YouTube.
“She remains a gift in death, he said. ‘When Jesus spoke about the greatest commandment, he had in mind such Servants of God as Sister Thea. ‘To love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself,’ portrays her life-long commitment. Her loving heart, her prophetic spirit, her brilliant mind and boundless stamina even in illness inspired many, and became a beacon for the Church to embrace more authentically the essence of what it means to be Catholic.”
Bishop Kopacz considers Sister Thea’s personal journey as a Black Catholic a great source of inspiration. Sharing Thea’s words, he said, “It means that I come to my Church fully functioning…I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I’m worth, all I hope to become. 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 a gift to the church.”
“Her suffering over the final years of her life from an incurable cancer united her to the Cross of the Lord Jesus and served to deepen her love and her graceful spirit. Indeed, she lived until she died.”
Sister Thea’s legacy, he further noted, is in tune with the Gospel passage about the vine and the branches, saying that in life sister Thea stayed conned to God and bore much fruit.
“The image of careful cultivation for the sake of abundant life continues with the Lord’s words in the Gospel. Remain in me on the vine, and you will produce much fruit. Otherwise, we are dead,” he said. “With the mind of the Lord, Sister Thea wanted to prune away all of the dead branches of ignorance, prejudice, blindness, narrow mindedness and worse that still clung to the Body of Christ, like barnacles on the Barque of Peter. In this manner of living with Sister Thea, inspired with the same commitment for the Church and for the world we too become the Lord’s disciples in word and deed, no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the Household of God with Christ Jesus as the capstone. This is her legacy.”
Following Mass, Bishop Kopacz presided over the Closing Session of the Diocesan Phase and Sealing of the Acts, which entailed sealing boxes of collected documents, testimonies, and evidence to be sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Cause of Saints for further, deeper investigation.
At the conclusion of the session, the congregation broke into song singing one of Sister Thea’s favorites, “This Little Light of Mine.”
Sisters Sue Ernster, Laura Nettles and Georgia Christensen stand with Bishop Joseph Kopacz in front of the sealed
boxes that will be shipped to Rome.
“This day is a sign of hope. It’s a real beacon of what the world needs, people who are authentically themselves and not letting any systems detract them from that and stepping into their fullness,” said Sister Sue Ernster, president of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration who was part of a contingency that traveled from the order’s motherhouse in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to take part in the celebration.
“Sister Thea (exemplified sainthood) in her dedication to God and always living out what God needed and wanted. At this time in our history, we definitely need people for the goodness of who they are and not letting anyone take that away.”
Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Georgia Christensen knew Sister Thea and remembers her as being “always full of life.”
“Sometimes she would even get into mischief,” said Sister Georgia. “But she had a spirit about her that just radiated the love of God. I know there were things that were difficult for her when she was in the congregation, but she rose above it all. She had a spirit of joy and a spirit of God’s love. It is so easy to hear her break into song and try to bring joy to people.”
Sister Georgia smiled broadly when asked how she felt to be on hand for the event. “Oh my goodness!,” she exclaimed. “This is the culmination of a life of service. How blessed are we to have someone from our community this close to sainthood and this close to God.”
Many friends and former students of Sister Thea attended the Mass, including Myrtle Otto, who was one of 10 children to attend Holy Child Jesus.
“She started a choir and there were about 30 of us in the choir. The name of the choir was ‘The Voice of Negro America,’” Otto said. “We traveled to different places performing at jubilees and other programs. We sang acapella. We didn’t have a piano or anything like that. Those were wonderful times and today is a wonderful day. I know she’s looking down on us smiling and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ That was her favorite word.
“This is a great day. Who would have known that someone we came across and taught us could become a saint. It’s just a special day. The Lord has blessed us with good weather for this day and we are very happy.”
As Otto reminisced about her days as Sister Thea’s student, a group of students from Sister Thea Bowman School in Canton were posing for photos in front of the altar and the boxes of documents containing the story of Sister Thea’s life.
Otto said if Sister Thea were alive today, her advice to these students would be simple.“Be good to people, especially your elders,” said Otto. “She loved God and was always trying to help others.”
The school’s principal, Christopher Payne, said attending the Mass and closing phase is an experience his students will always remember and cherish.
“I can tell you right now that this is a tremendous occasion. The fact that we were able to bless our students with the opportunity to be here is something that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives, especially with their school’s namesake being Sister Thea Bowman,” Payne said.
“To see all the hard work that people have put into the process of Sister Thea becoming a saint – that’s priceless.” Payne said his teachers work hard to educate their students about Sister Thea, sharing that “We have a Sister Thea prayer that our students learned and say every morning.”
“It’s truly an honor to have a homegrown saint and the fact that we are talking about an African- America woman from the State of Mississippi, which is known for all of its racial issues is special. For her to be selected, that is something that speaks volumes on where I’m from and gives me hope that I have to educate our young minds and make sure that they’re the future leaders.”
Now that the diocesan phase of Sister Thea’s cause has ended, Meg Paulino can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“A lot of hard work has gone into this process. Having this completed is huge,” Paulino, archivist and heritage curator for the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, said. “Sister Thea wrote a lot. She was a prolific writer and anything that is written in cursive has to be transcribed, which we didn’t know, so I hired an intern, Sidney Paulson (pictured above, right, with Meg Paulino) who was an intern at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, who I eventually hired fulltime, and she did all of the transcriptions. We organized an army of volunteers to help and so she would send out pages to them and they would type them and send them back. That was a huge undertaking.”
Paulino’s charge was getting all of the documents into a Google drive. “Everything had to be printed in very specific print font,” she explained. “Everything is very precise.”
Paulino and her staff held monthly Zoom meetings with Emanuele Spedicato, the Postulator of Sister Thea’s cause, who is based at the Gregorian University in Rome. “He was a very good postulator because we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Paulino said. “I think the canonization causes are very unique depending on the visibility of that potential saint. “Sister Thea has a lot of videos available on YouTube. She spoke. She did write things, but it was not sentences. It was more like thought and verse. She was a speaker and that was the hard part. How do you get video in front of the Vatican?”
As postulator, Spedicato, who is a canon lawyer, is responsible for guiding Sister Thea’s cause. He is currently the postulator for approximately 50 men and women. In the case of Sister Thea, Spedicato said the next step is to send all the documents to the Vatican. “That’s when the real study will begin,” he said. “We have to write a position, that is the summary of all the 15,000 pages that we have gathered. It’s a big document that will need to summarize the virtues, the life and the representation of the intercessory power and holiness of Sister Thea.”
The next step, Spedicato, said, would be the establishment of Sister Thea’s venerability. “We would hope that in four to five years, she can be declared venerable,” he said. “Then we need one miracle that needs to be proved for her beatification and one additional miracle for her canonization.” Spedicato said there are “many favors, many graces” that have been received through Sister Thea’s intercession.” “We need to look at some cases (for potential miracles) that are very interesting,” he said.
Spedicato said the Mass and closing of the Diocesan Phase was truly a special event. “The closing ceremony together with the opening session are the only public sessions that we are allowed to do,” he said. “Seeing all the people and all the happy faces that are really seeing not just the formalities, but part of the journey, is truly an honor and a joy.”
Part of Brother Mickey McGrath will accompany Sister Thea on that journey. McGrath, a Religious Brother in the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, is an accomplished writer and painter who has painted 47 pictures of Sister Thea. Copies of each painting are included in the boxes being sent to Rome.
McGrath is also the author of the 2008 book “This Little Light: Lessons in Living from Sister Thea Bowman.”
“I really got to know Sister Thea during a period of grief in my life, and her message to me was, ‘Keep on stepping,’” said Brother Mickey. “That was what stayed with me and it really changed my life.”
As Sister Thea’s cause moves forward, Archbishop Rivituso praised her lasting impact on the Church, highlighting her role as a faithful servant, gifted evangelizer and unifying presence who helped bridge racial and cultural divides.
“It is always good to have someone we can identify with—not only for the Diocese of Jackson, but for the entire Church—someone who is truly a Servant of God and a faithful servant of the Church, giving witness and preaching the Gospel through her song and her prayers,” he said. “She helped bridge racial and cultural divides for so many.
“Like Pope Leo said, we want to bring people together as bridge builders, remembering who we are—brothers and sisters in the human family—and truly bring forth the goodness of the Lord to all.”
Watch the Mass of Thanksgiving, Cause for Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman
Photo Gallery
View the Diocese of Jackson's Mass of Thanksgiving photo gallery here.
News Coverage
Watch WLBT3's report, "Sister Thea Bowman, a nun from Mississippi, one step closer to sainthood"
Watch Delta News Tv's report, "Yazoo City-born nun takes one step closer to being Mississippi's first canonized saint"
What can I do?
Anyone can support Sister Thea's cause. We need your prayers, your stories, your energy and your financial support. Visit the Diocese of Jackson's official Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman website to learn more.