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In today's New York Times, David Gonzalez offers a moving portrait of the closing of St. Martin of Tours, a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx, which has served the community for 86 years. He focuses particularly on the school's principal, Sister Nora McArt, who has worked with the children of St. Martin's for more than four decades.
St. Martin's is one of 26 schools in the Archdiocese of New York that will close this month. Most of these schools are in poor, urban areas. Gonzalez himself graduated from St. Martin's in the early 1970s. He writes:
To comfort the afflicted.
And now -- 40 years after I walked down the aisle clutching my diploma -- I returned to fulfill a final work of mercy: to bury the dead.
Read the full article on The New York Times Web site.