MassLive.com, which I praised in this space a couple months back for Ann-Gerard Flynn's thoughtful piece on locals' veneration of a touring relic of St. Anthony, has shown once again that it gets religion, this time with a sensitive and nuanced look at the vocational journey of an African-American Catholic priest.

Reading "African-American priest from Springfield finds his place in Catholicism, on campuses," I was surprised to discover that reporter Dan Warner does not normally cover the religion beat; his articles run the gamut of local topics. Judging by this engaging soft lede, he has a talent for storytelling:

WESTFIELD -- The Italian woman knelt in a front pew, twisting her neck to look at the man in the back of the Catholic church. She leaned to her husband.

"Guarda--look," she whispered in Italian. "Nero" (black).

He must be Baptist, she said. She went back to praying, nervously glancing over her shoulder.

The man in the back row finished praying and stood.

"Buon giorno," he said on his way out of the church.

He walked out the front door, along the side of the church and around back into the sacristy, put on his vestments and walked out to the altar to begin saying mass.

The man is the Rev. Warren Savage. And the moral of this true story, Savage said, is that we don't know people. Too often, people make assumptions based on appearance, and then miss a chance to learn and make a connection with someone else.

They never know what conversation they could have had. They never know that the African-American man in the back pew attended the Pontifical North American College in Rome and speaks Italian.

I like the delicacy with which Warner approaches Savage's experience as a member of a clerical culture in which he has relatively few African-American peers. Another reporter might taken advantage of the race angle to focus on occasions when Savage faced bigotry and prejudice. Warner doesn't shy away from discussion of the outsider aspects of Savage's experience, but he also avoids reducing the priest to a stereotype. Savage comes off as neither a plaster saint, nor a cassocked crusader. He is rather a very human priest, conscious of his own failings as he pursues holiness and serves his flock.

Particularly nice is this observation debunking a popular prejudice that has nothing to do with race: