Diocese of Haiti pledges to continue legacy of founder
Episcopal News Service. January 28, 2010 [012810-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The future of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti may well look very much like its past in one very important aspect: its service to the people of that impoverished nation.
"We have been here before, we are here now and we will be there after," said the Rev. Canon Oge Beauvoir, a Haitian native and one of four Episcopal Church missionaries assigned to work with the diocese in the impoverished country, who spoke to ENS Jan. 27 via telephone from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
The Episcopal Church of Haiti, known locally as L'Eglise Episcopale d'Haiti, will mark its 150th anniversary in 2011. Haitian Episcopalians have preached and practiced a "gospel of wholeness" since its founding in 1861, according to Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin.
A second missionary, the Rev. Lauren Stanley, echoed Beauvoir's promise.
"For 149 years the diocese has taken the lead in caring for the people of Haiti through our schools, through our medical clinics, our feeding programs, our water programs, through our churches, through the music program, through taking care of abandoned handicapped children," she told ENS. "Everything we have done for 149 years we will do for another 149 years."
Stanley said that the diocese is committed to all of the people of Haiti, "not just Episcopalians in our pews," adding that it will rebuild its schools, hospitals and churches and "will continue to care for the people that nobody else cares about because that's what we have always done."
The diocese's mission and ministry includes:
- A pre-quake network of 254 schools that taught more than 80,000 Haitians from preschool to university level. The institutions included a school for handicapped children, a trade school, a music school, a two-year business school, a nursing school that granted the first baccalaureate degrees in the country in January 2009, a seminary and a university.
- Medical clinics, including one run jointly with Partners in Health and another, Hôpital Sainte Croix in Léogâne, which provides outpatient treatment, a nutritional program and a de-worming research and treatment effort aimed at the parasitical filarial nematode, funded by the University of Notre Dame and the Gates Foundation.
- A renowned philharmonic orchestra and children's choir based at the cathedral.
- Agricultural, reforestation and other development projects and micro-financing efforts run in part with help from Episcopal Relief & Development.
- Peace and reconciliation work, including the Desmond Tutu Center for Reconciliation and Peace and non-violence training provided by Episcopal Peace Fellowship.
While the full extent of damage is still being assessed, it is clear, Beauvoir has said, that many of the diocese's churches and schools were destroyed or heavily damaged. The lost schools include the Holy Trinity complex of primary, music and trade schools adjacent to the demolished diocesan Cathédrale Sainte Trinité (Holy Trinity Cathedral) in Port-au-Prince, the university and the seminary. A portion of the St. Vincent School for Handicapped Children, also in the Haitian capital, collapsed, killing between six and 10 students and staff.
One of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church's 12 overseas dioceses, Haiti is numerically the largest diocese in the church with more than 83,000 Episcopalians in 169 congregations.
Stanley and Beauvoir noted that the diocese has no full-time staff and just 32 active priests, five retired priests who still assist the diocese, six deacons, three Sisters of St. Margaret and the four Episcopal Church missionaries. Three of those deacons were studying at Virginia Theological Seminary on Jan. 12.
The Rev. James Theodore Holly, one of the Episcopal Church's first African-American priests -- ordained in 1856 at age 27 -- founded the Haitian diocese after he left New Haven, Connecticut, for Haiti with 100 emigrants. Holly, who later became Haiti's first bishop, went to the countryside first, according to Duracin, and wherever he went he founded a school. Holly thought people should be able to read the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and he believed in education as a development tool, Duracin told Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori during her November 2008 visit to Haiti.
Holly published a summary of his ministry 43 years after he arrived in Haiti, available here.
Since the magnitude 7.0 quake struck 10 miles outside of Port-au-Prince just before 5:00 p.m. local time Jan. 12, Duracin has been promising that the church will continue its mission, both Beauvoir and Stanley said.
Duracin was made homeless by the quake and refused to be evacuated from the capital to elsewhere in Haiti, according to Lauren. He is living in a makeshift camp that sprang up the night of the earthquake in a rocky field next to College Ste. Pierre, a Port-au-Prince diocesan school that was destroyed in the temblor. Nearly 3,000 other earthquake survivors are also in the camp, including Beauvoir and nuns from the Sisters of St. Margaret whose convent was also destroyed.
"You are not alone, we are with you," is Duracin's message to people in the College Ste. Pierre camp and in the other nearly 20 similar encampments in which the diocese is caring for nearly 23,000 Haitians, according to Beauvoir.
The diocese is offering emergency assistance, with the help of Episcopal Relief & Development and other partners, and is looking to the future, the two missionaries said.
"It is daunting, but life in Haiti has always been daunting" ever since Columbus landed n 1492 near what is now known as Les Cayes, Stanley said.
It is estimated that the native Taino Amerindians population of what is now Haiti was virtually annihilated within 25 years of Columbus' landing. After Spain ceded the western third of the island of Hispaniola to the French in 1697, the French colony became very wealthy by way of a massive importation of African slaves and environmental degradation. The nearly half million slaves revolted in the late 18th century and Haiti eventually became the first black republic to declare independence in 1804.
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake Haiti was by far the poorest and least-developed country in the western hemisphere, with more than half of its people living on less than $1 per day, and 80% living on less than $2 per day. One-third of its children are malnourished and 500,000 cannot go to school. The unemployment rate is estimated to be 60 percent.
Haiti's history of violent political instability has also hampered the nation's efforts to serve its people, Haitian President René Préval told Jefferts Schori and the others at the beginning of a conversation in the now-destroyed presidential palace during her November 2008 visit. What Préval called "stability by dictatorship" between 1957 and 1986 that emptied the country of its "intellectual capacity," followed by 20 more years of political infighting, has meant that Haiti has been unable to form lasting partnerships with non-governmental agencies that can help the country, he said.
Stanley told ENS that "the church in Haiti has always done its part and God has always done God's part, and we're not going to stop now just because of an earthquake."
"What we have done in the past we will do now and we will continue to do until the kingdom comes because that is our commitment to the people of Haiti," she added.
Beauvoir said that, compared to the destruction, loss, death and injury all around him, "you have to count yourself very fortunate and … praise the Lord."
"And if we are still here today, the Lord has a mission for us: to show his love and care," he added.
The diocese's nursing school, Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de l’Université Episcopale d’Haïti in Léogâne (FSIL) (Faculty of Nursing Science of the Episcopal University of Haiti), is just one example of that mission of love and care. The school's buildings were relatively undamaged and its dean and students, joined by various other medical professionals, have been caring for quake survivors.
On Jan. 26 the Haiti Nursing Foundation posted a message on its website, saying it and the school "are here for the duration."
"Your support translates into hope for the future of nursing and healthcare in Haiti, which this school represents," the message said. "When the injured have been treated and gone home, when the visiting medical people have returned to their own countries, we will help the FSIL nursing students come back to school and complete their education."
Beauvoir and two Young Adult Service Corps missionaries, Mallory Holding and Jude Harmon, were in Port-au-Prince the day of the earthquake. Beauvoir, the dean of the diocese's non-destroyed seminary and the leader of its network of schools, is now also coordinating a special commission appointed by Duracin to help him guide the diocese's recovery. Holding and Harmon left the country in the days after the quake and are considering their options.
Stanley was home in Virginia when the quake hit. Duracin has asked her to remain in the U.S. to help coordinate relief and recovery efforts, and to tell the diocese's story. The diocese's three deacons at the Virginia seminary are also involved in that effort.
Telling the diocese's story is an important task, Stanley said. Duracin has told her that part of her message must be his plea to the rest of the world: "Do not forget us; do not look away."
Stanley added, "We cannot let Haiti fade from the front pages of our lives. Just because [CNN correspondent] Anderson Cooper and other people leave, doesn't mean that we can forget."
The diocese's commitment goes beyond rebuilding the diocese, the two missionaries said, noting the Episcopal Church's reputation for leadership in the nation. Beauvoir suggested that no other country in recent memory has experienced such a devastating earthquake that also decimated the national government.
"The state of Haiti has been destroyed," he said, describing extensive damage to governmental buildings and the deaths of officials. "Everything is gone."
"When the government is no longer there, when every single symbol of the government has been destroyed," Beauvoir said, people are turning to the churches. "We will be here," he added.
Haiti "has never really been able to determine its own future," Stanley said, noting what she called the nation's own leadership or lack of leadership throughout its history and sometimes through others' "interference that was often well-intentioned but misguided."
"We need to listen to what the Haitians are telling us," she said. "We need let the Haitians determine how we will rebuild this kingdom. We need to let the Haitians be in charge and our job is to support them, to serve them, to work with them."
Episcopalians across the church can lend their support and service as the diocese continues to help quake survivors survive its aftermath and as it begins the concurrent and long-term work of rebuilding the diocese and the country.
"Pray, pay attention, give money and figure out how you can come when we invite you, when we are ready," she said, adding that the diocese urges people to give financially through Episcopal Relief & Development, which she said is doing "magnificent work" supporting the diocese's short- and long-term plans.
The time will come soon when others can come to Haiti to lend their labor to the diocese's efforts, she and Beauvoir said. That time is not now, they and Duracin have said, because of the unsafe conditions and the lack of accommodation. The diocese is still trying to find tents for all the displaced people in its camps.
"The best of intentions of wanting to help and to bear witness are of no help when you become a burden, when you get in the way and when you direct aid to where we've already sent aid so that those who have nothing still get nothing," Stanley said.
"Some of the issues we are facing in Haiti are [caused by] people coming in and telling us how we're going to do this," she added. "It does not help for people [from outside Haiti] to make the decisions themselves and determine that they are going to decide where the most immediate aid goes, because they do not know what they are doing. They are not there. We need people to listen to the leadership."
Meanwhile, she said, "every prayer helps, every cent helps because when we put that all together then the community of God is working for the people of God"
To donate to Episcopal Relief & Development click here; or call the agency at 1-800-334-7626 ext.5129; or mail a gift to Episcopal Relief & Development, PO Box 7058, Merrifield, VA 22116-7058. Please write "Haiti fund" in the memo line of all checks.