Raymond Caesar

Biography Born in Eunice, Louisiana, to Celina Comeaux and Prosper Caesar, Caesar was ordained to the priesthood for the Society of the Divine Word in 1961, during a period when African-American priests were still few and far-between.

He had graduated from St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the only seminary in the United States created to educate African Americans specifically. The White Supremacist climate of the United States at the time dictated, for most Catholic ordinaries, that Black priests could not enter their seminaries or serve in their dioceses—which meant that the first prospective Black priests from the US were sent to study abroad. Most of these priests were also sent to serve abroad after ordination.

Caesar was one such priest, who after his ordination in 1961 would go on to become a Monsignor as well as a bishop outside of the US (in Papua New Guinea), as the SVD order served diocese across the globe.

He died in 1987 while still in office.

Personal life Caesar's cousin, Fr Roger Caesar, SSJ, was a Josephite priest in the United States.