2024 MLK Memorial Mass to be Jan. 13

Published: January 11, 2024

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor will celebrate the 37th annual Diocese of Little Rock Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Mass at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 13 at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.

During the Mass he will present the Daniel Rudd Award to a Black Catholic who is active in his or her parish and community during the Mass. All are invited to attend. This Mass is sponsored by the Diocesan Council for Black Catholics. For more information, contact Rosalyn Pruitt at (501) 375-9617.

The bishop presented the Daniel Rudd Award to Arthur Martin, a member of St. Raphael Church in Pine Bluff, during this Mass in January 2023. He was recognized for maintaining St. Peter School from 1989 to 2009, three years of work at St. Joseph Church, also in Pine Bluff, and his continued maintenance and service as a lector and usher at St. Raphael Church. Read Arkansas Catholic to learn more.

Daniel Rudd was a former slave who lived in Marion, Arkansas, and started the first National Black Catholic Congress. He published the first Black Catholic weekly, the American Catholic Tribune, in 1886. He died in 1933.

"By putting a human face on the injustices people suffer today — especially the racial disparities in every measure of wellbeing, which the Black Lives Matter movement emphasizes — we can enable the teaching of Jesus, and the teaching of Dr. King, to continue to make a difference today," Bishop Taylor said during his 2023 homily.

"Our country is shrouded in a darkness of spirit more cruel than that of the society 2023 years ago into which God has sent us a Savior to break the power of sin and death. This Savior now invites us to pour ourselves out completely, like he did to continue his as-yet-unfinished work of building his kingdom of truth and justice, in our world today.." Read his 2023 homily.