Elizabeth Lange was born around 1794 in Santiago de Cuba. An educated woman, she left Cuba for Baltimore in the early 1800s. Since there was no free public education for African American children in Maryland, she opened a school in her home. At the behest of the Archbishop of Baltimore, Lange was approached with the idea of founding a religious congregation for the education of African American girls. On July 2, 1829, Lange and three other women professed their vows and became the Oblate Sisters of Providence — the first congregation of African American women religious in the history of the Catholic Church. Elizabeth, the foundress and first superior general, took the religious name Mary. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine for the Causes of Saints approved the cause of her sainthood in 2004, and Pope Francis declared her venerable in 2023.