From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
September 8, 2026 (#131)
The Servant of God Father Thomas F. Price
“The Tar Heel Apostle”
Part II
Thomas Frederick Price was born in in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the year prior to the beginning of the US Civil War (1860) and died in Hong Kong, the year following the conclusion of World War I (1919). He was the 8th of 10 children of native North Carolinian parents who were both converts to the Catholic faith. His father, who died when he was a boy, was the editor of an influential Wilmington newspaper. His mother, who had a reputation for holiness, died while he was still in the seminary in Baltimore. Two of his sisters became nuns. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1886, by Bishop Henry Pinckney Northrop for service in the Apostolic Vicariate of North Carolina.
Price was barely eight years old when Bishop James Gibbons was named the first Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, in 1868. At the time, North Carolina counted less than a 1,000 Catholics resident throughout the state. (The vicariate was only raised to the level of a diocese in 1924, after both Gibbons and Price had died.) Gibbons’ missionary zeal and methods proved to be significant influences for Price, who himself labored for the next 25 years as priest, pastor, and missionary in his native state. His explicit goal was “to make every Tar Heel a Catholic.”
Shortly after his ordination he was named pastor of Saint Paul Parish in New Bern, where he established a parochial school for Black children and ministered to 17 missions in the vast region of eastern North Carolina assigned to him. In the mid-1890s, he was reassigned by his bishop to Raleigh. In short order, he had purchased property on the edge of the capitol city, which he named “Nazareth,” where he established an orphanage, a preparatory seminary, a convent, a school for local Black children, and a publishing house. The first issue of Truth magazine came out in 1897 and soon reached a national audience. Despite the poverty of the Catholic Church in North Carolina, this son of a newspaper editor successfully embraced the available media of the day to advance his evangelization goals.
Price knew that a more formal organization was needed to more effectively evangelize the American South and other rural areas of the nation. Convinced that the Catholic Church was missionary by its nature, he concluded that in order to foster a domestic missionary spirit among American Catholics, it was incumbent upon the American Church to establish a foreign missionary society. Price found a willing cooperator for his missionary vision in Father James Anthony Walsh of Boston, who was then the director of the archdiocesan office for the foreign missions. In June 1911, the two priests traveled to Rome where they received the approval of Pope St. Pius X to establish the first seminary and society in the United States to train priests and brothers for work in foreign missions. Their new foundation, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, popularly known as Maryknoll, was headquartered in New York.
After several years working as fundraiser, recruiter, and spiritual director on behalf of the new foundation, Price volunteered to be among the first group of Maryknoll priests to embark for China, despite his failing health. He was especially conscious that he was the only one of the four members of this first group that had any practical missionary experience. They arrived in Hong Kong in October 1918 and settled in their first mission, Yeungkong, which lay some 230 miles south of the British colony. Price threw himself into all the necessary work, which included being the superior of the pioneer group, the purchase of land, the repair and construction of buildings, the formation of catechists, etc., just as he had as a priest in North Carolina. However, a severe case of appendicitis forced him to leave the mission for the hospital in Hong Kong where he underwent unsuccessful surgery. He died on September 12 at the age of 59. Almost immediately, his reputation for holiness was acclaimed in China, New York, and North Carolina.
Future blog entries in this series will attempt to describe his fascinating spiritual life.
The faithful are encouraged to pray for his intercession:
HEAVENLY FATHER, you so inspired Father Thomas Frederick Price with love for you and zeal for the Gospel that he dedicated his life to serve you and Your Church, first in North Carolina, his home state, and then in the foreign missions.
Grant that by his example we may grow in holiness and into a deeper union with Our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to be authentic witnesses of the Gospel and proclaim the Holy Name of Jesus throughout the Diocese of Raleigh and to all the people and in all the places we are sent to love and serve.
If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your servant, Father Thomas Frederick Price, by granting the favor I (we) now request through his prayerful intercession (mention your request here) I (we) make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen
