On Saturday, February 8, 2014 at 10:30 a.m. The Episcopal Diocese of New York and the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine invited everyone to celebrate of the life and work of Blessed Absalom Jones. The Rev. Absalom Jones was an African-American abolitionist and clergyman. After finding a black congregation in 1794, he was the first African American ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the United States, in 1804. He is listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints and blessed under the date of his death, February 13, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer as “Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818”. For more information about this most important leader in the Episcopal church, see this web site http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/jones.php.