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78 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed
from his slave status, after which he married Juliette Noel. He used his
considerable income to support charitable causes. He conducted a fun-
draising effort among his rich clients of differing religious persuasions to
build a Catholic orphanage. Mother Elizabeth Seton sent three sisters to
start the orphanage. He ministered personally to victims of a plague.
He labored to dispel religious and racial prejudice in the city. One of
his customers, Emma Cary, wrote about his dignity and Catholic witness:
His life was so perfect, and he explained the teaching of the
Church with a simplicity so intelligent and courageous that every-
one honored him as a Catholic. He would explain the devotion to
the Mother of God with the utmost clearness, or show the union
of the natural and supernatural gifts in the priest.
6
Pierre worked up to the last two years of his life before dying at age
eighty-seven in 1853. Along with many others, the New York newspapers
mourned his passing. The
New York Post
reported, “Toussaint is spoken of
by all as a man of the warmest and most active benevolence.” He was
buried with his wife Juliette and niece Euphemia in Old St. Patrick’s cem-
etery on Mott Street in New York.
Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable—an important step in
Toussaint’s cause for canonization—in December 1996. Since then his
body has been reburied in the crypt of the archbishops in St. Patrick’s
Cathedral in New York City. If canonized he would become the first black
U.S. canonized saint.
As a married man, he was able to show us how a spouse may admi-
rably fulfill God’s call to holiness. He was a true and heroic disciple of
Jesus Christ.
Scripture tells us that no sooner had our first parents sinned than God
hastened to promise them the hope of redemption. God loved us so much
that he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to save us. In this chapter we review
the mysteries of Jesus found in the Gospels and doctrinal teachings about
him that were taught by early Councils of the Church. Venerable Pierre
6 Quoted in Boniface Hanley, OFM,
Ten Christians
(Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press:
1979), 34.