Raymond Rodly Caesar, SVD (14 February 1932 – 18 June 1987) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

prelate A prelate () is a high-ranking member of the Minister (Christianity), Christian clergy who is an Ordinary (church officer), ordinary or who ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from the Latin , the past participle of , which me ...

of the

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who served as Bishop of Goroka in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

from 1980 until his death in 1987. He was the first

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

to serve as a Catholic bishop outside of the

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Biography

Born in

Eunice, Louisiana Eunice is a city in Acadia and St. Landry parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The 2010 census placed the population at 10,398, a decrease of 1,101, or 9.5 percent, from the 2000 tabulation of 11,499. The St. Landry Parish portion of Euni ...

, to Celina Comeaux and Prosper Caesar, Caesar was ordained to the priesthood for the

Society of the Divine Word The Society of the Divine Word (), abbreviated SVD and popularly called the Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men. As of 2020, i ...

in 1961, during a period when African-American priests were still few and far-between. He had graduated from St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the only seminary in the United States created to educate African Americans specifically. The

White Supremacist White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...

climate of the

at the time dictated, for most Catholic ordinaries, that Black priests could not enter their seminaries or serve in their dioceses—which meant that the first prospective Black priests from the US were sent to study abroad. Most of these priests were also sent to ''serve'' abroad after ordination. Caesar was one such priest, who after his ordination in 1961 would go on to become a

Monsignor Monsignor (; ) is a form of address or title for certain members of the clergy in the Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" can be abbreviated as Mons.... or Msgr. In some ...

as well as a bishop outside of the US (in

), as the SVD order served diocese across the globe. Caesar was the first African-American Catholic bishop abroad. He was appointed as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Goroka in 1978, and would become the ordinary only two years later, making him the second-ever African-American ordinary anywhere in the world (after

Joseph Lawson Howze Joseph Lawson Edward Howze (born Lawson Edward Howze; August 30, 1923 – January 9, 2019) was an American Catholic prelate who served as the first Bishop of Biloxi from 1977 to 2001. He was the first openly Black Catholic ordinary of a U.S. ...

in 1977). He served as president of the local bishops' conference from 1983-1984. He died in 1987 while still in office.

Personal life

Caesar's cousin, Fr Roger Caesar, SSJ, was a Josephite priest in the United States.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Caesar, Raymond 1932 births 1987 deaths African-American Roman Catholic bishops Roman Catholic bishops of Goroka Catholics from Louisiana People from Eunice, Louisiana Divine Word Missionaries Order 20th-century American Roman Catholic bishops 20th-century African-American people St. Augustine Seminary (Bay St. Louis) African-American members of Catholic religious communities