PhotoCardinal O'Connor's Homily




Toussaint Suffered

A plea for racial justice at Mass honoring Haitian former slave

This is the text of Cardinal O'Connor's homily at Sunday Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral May 2.

Soon after this Mass I will be going over to the Capuchin church, St. John the Baptist, for a Mass in honor of Padre Pio, who as of this morning was beatified in Rome by our Holy Father. I mention him because the primary characteristic of his life was his suffering, his belief that he had what are called the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands, in his feet and in his side. He bled profusely, and this caused him great pain. He experienced, as well, a great deal of mental, moral and emotional anguish.

He suffered all of his life, and it was through his suffering apparently that he did so much good, the lesson of which we have to remind ourselves so frequently--that it was through the suffering and death of our Divine Lord on the cross that it became possible for the whole world to be saved and that each one of us, whoever we may be, can offer the simplest of our sufferings (a mild headache, a backache, the loss of a parent, the loss of a husband or wife or a child and other loved ones, etc.), we can unite with the sufferings of Christ on the cross and therefore offer that suffering for the salvation of souls to people all over the world.

I re-emphasize this because sometimes we forget that the man whom we celebrate today, Pierre Toussaint, was a man who suffered a great deal. Often in the outline of his life, which is all that time ever permits us to give, we forget this, the heart of it. It is my personal judgment, subject of course always to the authority of the Church, that if Pierre Toussaint is beatified and canonized it will be for this reason: the suffering that he accepted, the sufferings that he united with the sufferings of Christ.

Because this congregation traditionally comes each Sunday from all over the world, with the exception of a small nuclear group, many of you might not be familiar with Pierre Toussaint, and that would be understandable. I am not sure that I would know his story were it not for a remarkable woman, Mrs. Ellen Tarry. She wrote a beautiful book called "The Third Door." She has spent her life devoted to Pierre Toussaint and trying to advance awareness of him. It was through her book and through talking with her personally that I became familiar with Pierre Toussaint. At that time his body was in a cemetery downtown, buried in the cemetery of the church that he attended every single morning for 60-plus years. That was part of his suffering. He was black. He was a slave, and so he walked every day to church regardless of the weather--it could be bitterly cold or burning heat. The polite, respectable wealthy Catholics in their carriages en route to the same church would pass him by and never offer him a ride. That's suffering.

We had the body of Pierre Toussaint exhumed with the cooperation of the civil authorities and brought here, and he is now buried beneath this high altar with all of the bishops, archbishops and cardinals of New York. It will be a great privilege for me to be buried in a vault in the same section with Pierre Toussaint.

Pierre Toussaint was born into slavery in 1766, only 10 years before our Declaration of Independence. Fortunately it was a benign family, the Berard family, and they brought him to New York when they came to escape the revolution led by another Toussaint, Toussaint-Louverture, in which there was much cruelty and much barbarity demonstrated. Here Pierre Toussaint took care of them rather than vice versa because he became a skilled hairdresser and very wealthy. He went out and dressed the hair of all of the wealthy women. These were Colonial days and the famous names of history would be familiar to you. The women whose hair he dressed also turned to him for advice. They saw his holiness, his insights and the depth of his understanding. They asked his advice and they listened to it.

Because Pierre Toussaint took care of the family who "owned" him, the husband and wife, he long delayed his own marriage. Finally he married and then his wife died. This was another tremendous suffering for him. He loved her so very, very dearly and he waited so long to be married. He continued to take care of the wife of his so-called master who offered him his legal freedom, but he was not concerned about it. He knew he was a free man. They treated him very well. He did not live in slavery as we customarily think of slavery. He lived under the suffering of being legally owned by someone else, but the Berard family was good to him and he was even better to them. So he delayed almost to the end to accept his freedom from the widow of the man who had originally bought him.

There was plague in New York at that time, with huge numbers of people dying. Many, many people fled town, but not Pierre Toussaint. He went evening after evening to the sickest of the sick at risk to his own life to try to help them in any way that he could. The monies that he made from hairdressing--and he did become quite wealthy--he gave to the poor, that which was left over from taking care of the lady who was "his owner." Often Pierre Toussaint was asked why he did not retire as he got older. He said, "If I retire I would have more than enough money for myself, but I want to be able to give to the poor."

The church that Pierre Toussaint attended every day burned down. Who raised the money and donated most of the money himself but Pierre Toussaint. And yet when the celebration for the reopening came and he came to the Mass, there was no seat for him. He had to stand in the back where the blacks stood and sat if there were any seats in the back. This was suffering. But Pierre Toussaint was never, never bitter.

Sadly, there are some black people today who want nothing to do with the cause of Pierre Toussaint because they call him "Uncle Tom," because he permitted himself to be ruled by his white masters, and instead of joining in revolts against them treated them with Christian love. His answer was, "I am a Catholic. I receive the Eucharist. I receive the Divine Lord. I am not bitter toward anyone. I recognize what has been done to me. I recognize how I am treated here. But that is not enough to make me bitter any more than Christ was bitter on the cross. Indeed it was Christ who cried out, 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.' " This was very briefly the life of Pierre Toussaint who died in 1853.

The cause of Pierre Toussaint has been officially studied in Rome, again I would say in large measure because of Mrs. Ellen Tarry after the help of the two procurators, Msgr. O'Connell here in New York and Father Hyppolite in Haiti, and with the help of the Haitian bishops. Now all that remains between him and beatification and ultimate canonization will be the declaration of a true miracle. We have heard of different "miracles" but when we have investigated them we have been disappointed. Supposedly there was an individual in a hospital in Haiti who was completely cured of cancer after the doctors had given up. But then the doctors told us later that the cancer recurred in this woman so what we thought was a miracle was not. We pray that that day will come and that he will be beatified.

Beatified or not, Pierre Toussaint remains a wonderful model, and I wish he were here now. It would be inappropriate for me to speak of him today without at least a brief reference to a tragedy that occurred here in New York not too long ago, the tragic death of Mr. Amadou Diallo. According to reports, Mr. Diallo was killed by four white police officers. It is not for me, in my judgment it is not for any one, to judge those police officers at this point except for God and for the courts. They will have what we pray will be a fair trial. Nor can we in any way apply this error, if it was an error, this cruelty, if it was cruelty, to the overwhelming majority of police officers in New York who are outstanding individuals sacrificing their lives every day.

The police officers, as all of us, are products of our culture. It would be naive, it would be dishonest, if we pretended that this is a totally just and charitable culture. I wish that this would be learned from the killing of Amadou Diallo: that unless we begin treating one another, every one of us--whites treating whites, blacks treating blacks, Filipinos treating Filipinos, Hispanics treating Hispanics, Chinese treating Chinese, blacks treating whites, whites treating blacks--unless every one of us treats every other individual conscious of the reality that each person is made in the image and likeness of Christ then all of the racial efforts in the world will have no success. We can cry for peace with justice, but it must come from within our own hearts. We can restructure the judicial system, the legal system. We can restructure all of the laws of the United States, but that is not going to make me love anybody. It is not going to make anybody love me.

St. Peter, the first pope, is very clear in the reading that was read today in Creole, "Come to the Lord." He is talking to all of us. He is not talking to black people here or white people here or Hispanic people here or people of any color. He is talking to every one of us. "Come to the Lord, a living stone, rejected by men but approved, nonetheless, and precious in God's eyes. You, too, are living stones, built as an edifice of spirit, into a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." [1 Pt. 2: 4-9] He means you. He means me. We are living stones. We are acceptable to Jesus Christ. We are the stones through which he wants to build the living body in this world. He does not say, "I want black stones. I want white stones. I want yellow stones. I want red stones."

Is there any one in this Church who could have read the first reading in English today more clearly, more articulately than Mr. Leroy Adolph? I have had a lot of education, but so have many of you here. I could not read it any more articulately than he. He happens to be black, but what difference does that make? He was proclaiming the Word of God.

Tragically the answer that we have received over the shooting of Mr. Diallo, the answer given by some in the newspapers and in letters that I have received have been quantitative answers, that there are more crimes committed by black people and that there are more black people in prison than white people. I do not know if that is the case because I do not know what methods are used for discernment. I do not know whether the courts have looked at every one equally. I have no way of knowing this, but it does not matter to me. Do we quantify violence or do we limit violence to guns and knives?

What of those highly respectable white people who preach abortion, who encourage others to destroy unborn little babies made in the image and likeness of God? Isn't that violence to tear a baby out of its mother's womb and tear it into pieces? What of those in the highest political offices in this land who support partial-birth abortion, when the baby, 9 months old and in the act of being born, has scissors driven into its skull? Is that violence? That is respectable violence? Does the baby ask, "What color is the doctor who drove the scissors into my skull?"

I was a bishop in Scranton, Pa., where the coal mines are. For years and years the men who worked in the coal mines worked under the most ferocious conditions. There was no recompense. They had to buy their food from the company store, they had to live in the company house, and the company owned the coal mines. If there was a cave-in in the coal mines the man or men who were killed would be thrown on flatbeds, pulled by the mule from the mine to the door of the widow and the body thrown on the steps or on the little porch outside the house. I never knew a black person, an Asian person or a Hispanic person who owned a coal mine. Is this violence?

It is not going to end, my dear friends, until we come to believe what St. Paul is saying to us here--that each one of us, without exception, with no regard to color or race or ethnic background or anything else, is a living stone. We constitute the Body of Christ. I am white on the outside but not white on the inside. But I am a member of the Body of Christ, crucial to the Body of Christ. It is true of every one here that he wants to make it so of every one in the world. He wants every one in the world before the end of time to be a member of his Body.

We look for the way. We have all sorts of scholarly articles being written now, all sorts of battles going on, all sorts of protests. Everybody thinks he or she knows the way to justice and peace. Our Divine Lord says, "I am the way, the truth and the life."

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