Historic Bishop

Among those most disturbed by Los Angeles' race riot this summer was Pope Paul VI; the tragedy of Watts moved him to hasten a decision to appoint an American Negro bishop. Last week, on the eve of his historic flight to New York, Pope Paul announced his choice: the Rev. Harold R. Perry, 48, superior of the Southern province of the Society of the Divine Word. Perry's post: auxiliary bishop of New Orleans. Announcing the appointment, New Orleans' Archbishop Philip Hannan--himself raised to that position only three days earlier--said warmly, "We welcome the first American-born Negro bishop."*

Bishop Perry's appointment serves various needs. For one thing, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have long worried, as one said last week, that "there was no Negro among us." Significantly, Perry will serve in the Southern city with not only the largest (592,000) Catholic population, but also with some of the South's most bitter racial disputes. In 1955, white Catholics refused to attend a Louisiana church to which a Negro priest had been assigned. Three years ago, when the late Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel ordered parochial schools integrated, Catholics protested so vehemently that three, including Political Boss Leander Perez, were excommunicated. One of the three, Mrs. Bernard J. Gaillot, last week called Bishop Perry's appointment "another reason why God will destroy the Vatican."

The new bishop knows his diocese and its problems well. One of six children, he was born the son of a rice-mill worker in segregationist Lake Charles, La. The family spoke French at home, and although the parents never got to high school, all six children attended college; one brother became a surgeon, two of them dentists. Harold Perry entered St. Augustine's Divine Word Seminary in Mississippi at 13, was ordained in 1944, and spent 14 years as a parish priest. Appointed rector of the seminary in 1958, he worked for better race relations, caught the eye of Archbishop John P. Cody, Rummel's successor in New Orleans and now archbishop of Chicago. Cody last week joined Archbishop Hannan in announcing the appointment of his protege.

Bishop Perry's selection is likely to resurrect some of New Orleans' racial dissension. On the other hand, as the Vatican realizes, it will not go unnoticed among U.S. Negroes. Of them, only a meager 723,000 are now numbered among the nation's 45 million Roman Catholics.

* Technically, Perry is not the first. James Augustine Healy, bishop of Portland, Me., from 1875 to 1900, was the son of a white Georgia planter and a mulatto slave, once joked about his color by suggesting that a small girl who called him "black as the devil" should rephrase it "black as the ace of spades."

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