Venerable Pierre Toussaint, the first layperson to be buried in the crypt under the high altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City is an inspiring figure whose cause for canonization is currently underway. We include his story here as the first in a Black History Month series of four black American Catholics whose saintly lives of heroic virtue and Christian Witness have opened up each one’s cause for canonization.

Pierre Toussaint was born in June 1766 on the Caribbean island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. His mother was enslaved, thus Pierre became the property of the Bérard family.

By all accounts, the Bérards were more humane than some slaveowners, and they educated Pierre in the house with other children, teaching him to read and write.

The Bérards returned to France, leaving their eldest son, Jean, in charge of the plantation. In 1787, in the face of mounting unrest that would become the Haitian Revolution, leading to the Islands and its enslaved peoples independence, Jean Bérard and his wife fled to New York City, taking Pierre and his sister Rosalie with them.

Bérard soon returned to Haiti and died. Pierre became the main breadwinner for the household, as he was apprenticed to New York’s chief hairdresser. Pierre was allowed to keep his allowance, yet he continued to support the widowed Madame Bérard until she married again. Mrs. Philip Schuyler (mother of the now-famous Schuyler Sisters and mother-in-law of Alexander Hamilton), who wrote an early biography of Pierre, noted his extreme kindness to Madame Bérard. On her deathbed, Madame Bérard’s dying wish was for Pierre to be freed.

At the age of forty-five, Pierre was freed and he paid for his sister Rosalie’s freedom. In 1811, he redeemed his young bride, Juliet, from slavery and they were wed. Together, they cared for Pierre’s orphaned niece and raised her as their own.

Pierre became a hero of the immigrant Haitian community in New York—he and Juliet provided employment services, lodging, and a credit union for newly freed slaves arriving in the Port of Manhattan. Pierre raised money for the first Catholic school for free black children in New York and for the church that would become the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which still stands today.

In 1853, Pierre died at the ripe old age of eighty-seven, and his remains were buried in Old St. Patrick’s, next to Juliet’s. They were later transferred together to the crypt in the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where they remain today.

In 1996, John Paul II declared Pierre Toussaint Venerable, the first step towards canonization. As a Venerable, Pierre Toussaint does not yet have a feast day, but prayers may be offered, asking for his intercession.

Venerable Pierre Toussaint, who used new-found freedom and hard-earned prosperity to generously serve others—pray for us!