Bishop Emmanuel Constant retires after thirty-seven years in Gonaives

Emmanuel Constant was born in Port-au-Prince on 5 January 1928 and ordained a priest on 12 July 1953. Paul VI named him bishop of Les Gonaives on 20 August 1966, and Archbishop Antonio Samore consecrated him on 28 October that year, part of the deal that put Haitians in the Haitian episcopate after Francois Duvalier’s fight with the Vatican. He held that diocese through the whole Duvalier dictatorship, through the Gonaives risings that helped bring it down, and through the coups after. On 30 July 2003 he reached the age limit and retired. He died of cancer in Port-au-Prince on 16 June 2009.