What would it take for there to be a significant number of black Catholics, especially in the south? Bonus points if the Knights of Columbus or other fraternal RCC organizations unite to fight the Klan in secret.
Have more African slaves transported to America from Angola and the Kongo Empire.
An explicitly anti-Slavery Pope leads to a heavily Catholic abolitionist movement, and many Catholics joining the Freedmen's Bureau as teachers?
One of the groups the Klu Klux Klan persecuted was Catholics, for example.
He might run into trouble with slave-owning Catholics in the US.
What does the origin has to do? They are catholic now, but in those times they were not. Regardless of origin, slaves tended to convert(or be forced to) to the religion of their masters.
What would it take for there to be a significant number of black Catholics, especially in the south? Bonus points if the Knights of Columbus or other fraternal RCC organizations unite to fight the Klan in secret.
What would it take for there to be a significant number of black Catholics, especially in the south? Bonus points if the Knights of Columbus or other fraternal RCC organizations unite to fight the Klan in secret.
... ಠ_ಠ
Nzinga a Nkuwu, aka João I of Kongo, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1491, following contact by Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão. So complete was the totalitarianism of the Congolese empire at the time that at João's conversion the entire kingdom became de jure a Catholic state. This was expanded upon by further rulers; Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba) attributed his victory at the capitol of M'banza-Kongo against his half-brother Mpanzu a Kitima thanks to divine intervention in the form of a vision of the Virgin Mary and Saint James. Following said event Alfonso devoted himself to spreading the Catholic faith throughout his kingdom, creating religious institutions, particularly schools, to spread Catholicism. Rui d'Aguir, the Portuguese royal chaplain sent to advice Alfonso, famously declared that the emperor knew more about the tenants of the Christian faith than d'Aguir himself did. Alfonso's own son Henrique was sent to Europe to study, becoming an ordained priest in 1518 and Bishop of Utica, returning to Kongo in the early 1520s to basically run Kongo's new church system. He died in 1531, as he was preparing to travel to Europe for the Council of Trent.
You don't need Europeans (whites) converting/aiding African slaves to make them Catholic. Many Africans were Christians of one flavor or another long before the first American colonies were settled.