"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
As a Salesian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a champion of liberation theology:
Mr Aristide was not cut out for a role in politics. The son of a poor peasant family -- his father was lynched when Mr Aristide was a toddler, accused of using black magic to commit evil acts -- he was taken in by Catholic priests. Sent to study abroad, he became fluent in several languages while studying theology in Canada and Israel.
Returning to Haiti, he won a reputation as a slum preacher not afraid to mix politics into his sermons, criticising the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who eventually fled to France in 1986. His espousal of liberation theology led to his separation from the Salesian order.
"He was advocating violence," said the Reverend Edward Cappelletti, who headed the order's regional office in New York. Father Lawrence Bohnen, a Dutch priest, now dead, who ran the Salesian schools in Haiti, wrote that members of his congregation at the St John Bosco Church would ask Mr Aristide to bless their machetes.
"What do you do with your machetes?" the priest asked them. They said they used them in the fields. "What else do you do with your machetes?" Mr Aristide went on, apparently hinting at more violent uses for the tool.
The WSJ notes the Congressional Black Caucus' love-affair with the Haitian tinpot.