Beverly Carroll
Beverly Carroll. Photo via Black Catholic Messenger
The founding director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for African American Catholics started the organization in 1988 and led it for two decades.
Carroll died Nov. 13 at age 75.
Early in her secretariat role, Carroll predicted Black and Hispanic Catholics would become “the dominant cultures of the 21st century in the American Catholic Church,” the UPI reported.
She advocated for more Black priests and encouraged the presence of more African American lay people in the front offices of the nation’s dioceses, reported the Black Catholic Messenger.
In 2009, she was named the assistant director in the USCCB’s Secretariat for Cultural Diversity and advised the bishops on evangelization in African American communities. According to the USCCB, she received the first Servant of Christ Award-Lifetime Achievement Honors from the National Black Catholic Congress in 2012.
Phil Saviano
The clergy sex abuse survivor was a whistleblower who played a prominent role in bringing to light sexual abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic priests.
Saviano died Nov. 28 at 69.
His story was featured in “Spotlight,” the 2015 film that depicted the investigation by The Boston Globe of a cover-up by scores of priests who had molested children. In the wake of the scandal, Cardinal Bernard Law, the prelate in Boston, resigned and the church made settlements with hundreds of victims.
In this Feb. 15, 2002, file photograph, Phil Saviano, regional coordinator for the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, poses for a portrait in his Boston home. Saviano, a clergy sex abuse survivor and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of predatory assaults by Roman Catholic priests in the United States, died Nov. 28, 2021. He was 69. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
“My gift to the world was not being afraid to speak out,” Saviano told The Associated Press in mid-November.
Though movie watchers may have learned relatively recently of Saviano, who is pictured on his website wearing a “Recovering Catholic” T-shirt, he broke his silence in 1992 and described how he was sexually assaulted by his confessor and priest, David Holley of Worcester, Massachusetts. Holley, who died in prison in New Mexico in 2008, received a 275-year sentence for molesting eight boys.
According to Saviano’s website, after winning a settlement that did not restrict him from speaking freely, he established the New England chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Saviano also expanded SNAP’s website, which became a communication tool for survivors and reporters, and he served on the organization’s board.
Marcus Lamb
The president and CEO of Daystar Television Network was known for his outspoken opposition to COVID-19 vaccines.
Lamb died Nov. 30 at 64 after contracting the virus.
He, along with his wife, Joni Lamb, was known for a commitment to addressing racism.
In this image provided by Daystar, Daystar CEO Marcus Lamb poses. Lamb, the CEO and founder of the conservative Christian Daystar Television Network, died at age 64. (Daystar via AP)
“Joni and I remain committed to standing against the evil sin of racism,” he wrote in a summer 2020 Facebook post during a time of Black Lives Matter protests. “The murder of George Floyd and the pain that followed have been heart breaking and I know it also breaks the heart of God.”
Lamb defended his network’s broadcast of a series of programs featuring vaccine skeptics and proponents of alternative treatments they considered for dealing with COVID-19.
“Why are we doing this?” Marcus Lamb said. “Because God loves people and we love people.”
