Pierre Toussaint

The next American to issue from the saint-makers' assembly line will probably be layman Pierre Toussaint, born a slave in Haiti in 1766. He migrated to New York in 1787 and became a well-known barber there. He was a benefactor of the African American community and a founder of the city's first Roman Catholic orphanage. Toussaint, who died in 1853, still has a devoted following among immigrant Haitians in New York. A cause for him was formally opened in 1989.

Scientists have positively identified a skeleton exhumed from a New York cemetery as the remains of a Haitian slave who is a candidate to become America's first black saint, Cardinal John J. O'Connor said Saturday. A team of archeologists, forensic scientists and anthropologists determined that a skeleton dug up earlier this month was that of Pierre Toussaint, the cardinal said. Toussaint was born in 1766 and brought to New York at age 21 by his French owners.

The next American to issue from the saint-makers' assembly line will probably be layman Pierre Toussaint, born a slave in Haiti in 1766. He migrated to New York in 1787 and became a well-known barber there. He was a benefactor of the African American community and a founder of the city's first Roman Catholic orphanage. Toussaint, who died in 1853, still has a devoted following among immigrant Haitians in New York. A cause for him was formally opened in 1989.

Skeletal remains found in Manhattan were believed to be those of a former Haitian slave under consideration for sainthood, a medical examiner said. The former slave, Pierre Toussaint, was buried at the cemetery where the bones were found after his death in 1853 at age 87. As a preliminary part of the Roman Catholic Church's consideration for sainthood, his skeletal remains were sought and were scheduled to be moved to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

To the grande dames of New York society whom he served as hairdresser and confidant in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Pierre Toussaint was the closest thing on Earth to a saint--and not just because of the wonders he worked with their hair. Through their grapevine, they knew better than most other New Yorkers the endless acts of charity and benevolence performed by this humble, self-effacing man who began each day by attending 6 a.m. Mass at St. Peter's Catholic Church.

A truck hauling steel coils crashed into the side of a school bus taking youngsters on a field trip Thursday, injuring more than three dozen children and adults, eight critically. "It was just bodies all over the place," firefighter Cliff Moore said. The impact sent the bus, carrying kindergartners and first- and second-graders, spinning across the road and threw at least five children onto the pavement and into a yard.

The Little Haiti neighborhood here seemed haunted by history Monday, the people riven with mistrust. In barber shops and offices, exiles watched live satellite broadcasts of American troops pouring into their homeland and even people two generations too young for firsthand knowledge of the event recalled the last U.S. occupation of Haiti as if they had been there for each of its 19 years. "I know what happened in 1915," said Miguel Jean, 33, a security guard. "They came and then didn't leave."

There's been a flurry of saintly activity at the Vatican recently. Pope John Paul II has expressed a desire to elevate more modern role models to the level of veneration, beatification or sainthood, and the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has been working feverishly to comply. This is good news for U.S.

To the grande dames of New York society whom he served as hairdresser and confidant in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Pierre Toussaint was the closest thing on Earth to a saint--and not just because of the wonders he worked with their hair. Through their grapevine, they knew better than most other New Yorkers the endless acts of charity and benevolence performed by this humble, self-effacing man who began each day by attending 6 a.m. Mass at St. Peter's Catholic Church.

Scientists have positively identified a skeleton exhumed from a New York cemetery as the remains of a Haitian slave who is a candidate to become America's first black saint, Cardinal John J. O'Connor said Saturday. A team of archeologists, forensic scientists and anthropologists determined that a skeleton dug up earlier this month was that of Pierre Toussaint, the cardinal said. Toussaint was born in 1766 and brought to New York at age 21 by his French owners.

Skeletal remains found in Manhattan were believed to be those of a former Haitian slave under consideration for sainthood, a medical examiner said. The former slave, Pierre Toussaint, was buried at the cemetery where the bones were found after his death in 1853 at age 87. As a preliminary part of the Roman Catholic Church's consideration for sainthood, his skeletal remains were sought and were scheduled to be moved to St. Patrick's Cathedral.

President Clinton, political leaders, princes of the church and close friends on Monday paid tribute to Cardinal John J. O'Connor with solemn prayers and joyful praise in St. Patrick's Cathedral--the church he loved. Beneath towering gray-stone arches, the funeral Mass focused on the clergyman whom many regarded as the nation's point man for Pope John Paul II, but who preferred to call himself a simple parish priest.

On what could be the eve of a U.S.-led invasion of their tormented homeland, the parishioners of Notre Dame d'Haiti Roman Catholic Church will don their Sunday best today and pray for a quick end to any bloodshed. The cause may be a just one, they allow, but the fact remains that once again lives may be lost in the Caribbean. "As in all wars, some innocents will pay for it," said Jean Destine, a social worker who took his 11-year-old son to a peace vigil that broke up after sunrise Saturday.