The coming months will see half a dozen U.S.-born Black Catholics ordained to the diaconate and priesthood, the highest number in several years. The men hail from across the nation, including New Jersey, Texas, North Carolina, Maryland, Louisiana, and New York.
James Johnson IV, a seminarian for the Diocese of Charlotte at the Athenaeum of Ohio in Cincinnati, will be ordained to the transitional diaconate by Bishop Michael T. Martin, OFM Conv. on Saturday, May 23, at St. Mark Catholic Church in Huntersville, North Carolina. It is the penultimate step in a journey that began in 2019, when he entered St. Joseph College Seminary in Mt. Holly.
Raised at Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church, one of the diocese’s African-American parishes, Johnson has served as president of the National Black Catholic Seminarians Association since 2023.
“To both young men and young women considering vocations, I would say go for it, because you can’t lose anything from it,” he told Catholic News Herald earlier this spring.
“Whether you go to seminary or discern with a religious community, they can help you grow in your faith and personal journey with Christ. You grow in faith and love with them. If you feel like the Lord is calling you, go out on a limb and trust Him.”
Also being ordained the same day is transitional deacon Ryan Agbim, a New Jersey native who will become a priest for the Divine Word Missionaries. After a stellar high school athletics career and his graduation from Rutgers University, he entered the seminary in 2018 and professed perpetual vows in 2025.
Agbim is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and his ordination will take place at the hands of Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel of Lafayette at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Wheeling, Illinois.
On Saturday, May 30, Dcn Duwan Booker will be ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Anthony B. Taylor for the Diocese of Little Rock, where he began formation in 2019. A convert to the faith, Booker played college football at Hendrix College before completing seminary studies at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio and St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana.
Booker’s ordination will take place at Christ the King Church in Little Rock, and he is set to become just the second Black priest to be ordained for the Diocese of Little Rock in its 183-year history. This will also make him the second in the entire state of Arkansas.
“God can use ordinary men like me to do extraordinary things,” he told Arkansas Catholic this month.
“Being the second Black priest means that hopefully some Black kid can know the Lord can call him to anything, too. There is no limit for [how] the Lord can use us.”
Duwan Booker, a former Baptist and football player who arrived in Conway from Fort Worth, Texas, in 2015, converted to Catholicism in 2018 and is slated to become the second Black priest ordained for the Diocese of Little Rock.
— Arkansas Catholic (@arkcatholic) May 16, 2026
The month of June will also feature two ordinations, both on Saturday, June 20. Dcn Jessiah Rojas wil be ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
A native of Southern Maryland, Rojas aspired to play college football before transitioning to coaching while studying at Ave Maria University, where he converted to the Catholic faith. He entered the seminary in 2020 and graduated from St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington and Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
He is one of eight men from a single parish—St. John Francis Regis Church in Hollywood, Maryland—to enter the priesthood in recent years.
“Vocations keep coming in a way that’s quasi-miraculous,” the parish pastor Fr Raymond Schmidt told Catholic Standard in March.
In the Deep South, Aeli Poydras will be ordained a transitional deacon for the Diocese of Baton Rouge by Bishop Michael Duca at St. Joseph Cathedral. Raised Catholic, he entered the seminary in 2022 while in his early fifties, following a career in law and civil service. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University, the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center, and Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans.
A permanent deacon will also be ordained to the priesthood this year, Dcn Ernest F. “Ernie” Hart for the Diocese of Bridgeport. An attorney and former civil servant like Poydras, Hart was ordained in 2011 for the Diocese of Brooklyn and served there before being hired in Connecticut in 2024 as the diocesan general counsel. He was also a college professor and administrator, as well as a New York State Supreme Court justice.
The father of three adult children, Hart is a graduate of Fordham University; St. Joseph Seminary in Yonkers, New York; and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. He will be ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Frank Caggiano on Saturday, November 21.
The six upcoming ordinations in the African-American Catholic community follow a permanent diaconate ordination earlier this month, Dcn Darron Woodus for the Archdiocese of Baltimore. After a quarter-century of service in corporate operations and project management, Woodus was hired as director of parish operations at Holy Family Catholic Church in Randallstown, Maryland, in 2016.
A graduate of the University of Maryland Baltimore County and St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute, Woodus has been married to his wife Renita for 10 years and they share a blended family of four children. He was appointed the archbishop’s delegate for Black Catholics earlier this year.
Among the wider diaspora, several transitional deacons from the Caribbean and Africa will also be ordained to the priesthood this year in the United States. The former includes Haitian-born Jesuit author and psychologist Patrick Saint-Jean, and Marc Declama, the first Haitian to profess perpetual vows in the Divine Word Missionaries.
Saint-Jean will be ordained on Saturday, June 13, at the Church of the Gesu in Milwaukee, while Declama will be ordained alongside Agbim in Illinois. Another Haitian, Fr Saint-Clos Papouloute, was ordained for the Archdiocese of Miami on May 9.
According to data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Black Catholics from across the diaspora and Africa make up roughly 5% of surveyed ordinands for the priesthood this year in the United States. American-born Black ordinands comprise less than 1% of the 428 total.
Ahead of the scheduled ordination Masses, approximately 31 American-born Black Catholics are in formation for the priesthood, including ~21 for dioceses and ~10 for religious communities. The latter include members of the Divine Word Missionaries, Benedictines, Carmelites, Jesuits, Dominicans, and Josephites, among others.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
