There have probably been black priests since the beginning of the Church, There may even have been a black disciple. We just do not know. There were many black Jews in Jerusalem in the first century.
You mentioned one black pope but also Pope St. Gelasius was black and probably the great doctor of the Church St. Augustine was probably black as well. King David had many Ethiopian wives and legend is it that one of his sons by a black wife took the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia to be preserved. The Ethiopian Church says that they still have it.
God Bless! In Christ Fr. Joseph.
The entire concept of "race" did not exist until the Age of Exploration - that is, around the year 1500. So: there was no record of race prior to that time. Also: typically no records in ancient times were kept regarding the skin tone of any particular individual (there are a very few exceptions).
History teaches that Ethiopia was one of the very first nations to receive Christian missionaries, Christianity existing there in the first century C.E.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianit... If you accept that the Christian "church" that existed at that time was the Catholic Church (which is what Catholics teach), then the first "Black" priest was certainly ordained in the first century (unlike Egyptians and most other northern Africans, Ethiopians were renowned for their dark skin even in ancient times). If you want to restrict "Catholic" to "Latin-speaking", then we have more difficulty - the primary difficulty again being that the concept of "race" had not even been invented in ancient times, and so what we consider distinguishing characteristics of race typically not noted in ancient records. According to this questionable article, the first Catholic African priests were from Masaka, Uganda http://allafrica.com/stories/20110113083... But this is - rather - the first official Catholic seminary in sub-Saharan Africa, which first ordained priests in 1913.
This might give you some ideas...but remember that the Mediterranean coast of Africa was primarily populated by Phoenicians, Greeks and Berbers in the ancient period - none of which were classified as "Black". As "race" (and therefore racism) did not exist at that early date, I find it hard to believe that there were NO "Black" Catholic (Latin-speaking) priests in the early centuries of Christianity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catho... - Jim, Fundamentalist Christian, http://www.bible-reviews.com.
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.