Servant of God Friar Martin de Porres Ward, O.F.M. Conv.

The Catholic Social Action Office presented a profile on Servant of God Friar Martin de Porres Ward, O.F.M. Conv., as part of its Saintly Seven series.

Born Matthias DeWitte Ward in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 20, 1918, to William Henry Ward and Clara Iorby, he was raised in a Methodist family. After attending Mass with a friend at age 17, he began his conversion to Catholicism and was baptized at St. Augustine Church in Washington, D.C., in 1936.

Ward entered the Salvatorian Seminary in Saint Nazianz, Wisconsin, from 1942 to 1945. When he applied to the St. Francis Seminary of the Conventual Franciscans in Staten Island, New York, in May 1945, he identified himself as being of African descent in a letter to vocation director Fr. Celestine Regnier, O.F.M. Conv. Fr. Regnier responded that while the Provincial Chapter had not previously accepted applicants of color, they were seeking opportunities to do so, including through new missions in Central and South America and Brazil. Ward became the first African American Conventual Franciscan.