Aid to the Church in Need: Haiti: Nourishing hope with the Word

Haiti: Nourishing hope with the Word

Posted by ACN News on 25/2/2009, 2:19 pm
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Haiti

Nourishing hope with the Word

By Mario Bard

On a visit to the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Archbishop Louis Kébreau of Cap-Haïtien, who is also president of the Haitian bishops' conference, revealed that he has no illusions regarding the situation of his country, which is one of permanent crisis. But despite everything, the Church in the country continues to strive to fulfil her role -- which is to restore hope that, come what may, one day, perhaps...

Last autumn Hurricane Ike provided us with new images of Haiti, but already there was an air of déjà vu. Houses buried in mud, towns and villages destroyed, people quite obviously overwhelmed... and alone in their misery. "When you have a lame-duck government which just makes speeches the whole day long, you start to wonder where there is any commitment", says Archbishop Kébreau, who doesn't mince his words. "I can only tell you that when I hear this kind of 'Port-au-Prince jargon', it means nothing to me. It as if I've landed in another country or on another island", the archbishop adds.

(Archbishop Kebreau president of the Bishops’ Conference of Haiti says the country is in "a state of permanent crisis")

So what is Mgr Kébreau expecting from the international community, which is already present in the shape of the UN mission in Haiti? "Personally, what I very often find with [the officials of] this community is that they come to Port-au-Prince and always go to see the same people". According to the archbishop, these officials should have the courage to go out into the countryside to see what is actually happening on the spot, instead of allowing themselves "to be courted and pampered with receptions, cocktails, and smooth talk".

Preferring the teeth of the sharks

Corruption is a constant "danger" on the island, above all in public works, at the airports, in government. It is an evil that is eating away at a society made up of a mainly young population -- over 60% of the inhabitants are aged 24 or less. "These young people, who have no future, organise themselves into gangs", Mgr Kébreau explains. "And so, they rape, carry out kidnappings, anything you can think of". These young people, he feels, need to be "liberated from their self-perception, made to feel that they are someone", before it is too late. "Recently they repatriated 250 people who had tried to escape by sea", he explains. "Many, many of them were young. But when a young man tells you that he'd prefer the teeth of the sharks to the misery of Haiti, then you really have to understand the despair of these young people", the archbishop insists again.
He is deeply saddened at the fact that most of them cannot have any access to the technological "cyber-revolution" that is sweeping the world. The young seem to be completely overlooked by the government authorities, "because there isn't the understanding of the need to really come to the aid of these young people", he concludes. Added to such incomprehension, this is a generation also deeply affected by the world crisis. For in fact, the revenue coming in from the Haitian population abroad in Canada and the United States is now falling. People there are losing their jobs and so they can no longer send money to their family at home. Just one more crisis to add to the state of "permanent crisis" that Haiti already endures.

Learning once more who Jesus is

The Church has always been present in Haitian society. Undoubtedly so in the social field, as indeed it is in almost every developing country. On the other hand, while the Church in Haiti clearly has a social role, she has also resolutely set herself to the task of the New Evangelisation, following the meeting of 8 December 2007, which itself was a follow-up to the meeting of the bishops of Central and South America, including the Caribbean, in Aparecida, Brazil (April 2007). "The Church is the great sleeper; it's time she woke up", stresses Archbishop Kébreau, when we talk to him about the difficulty that Catholics have had, historically, in pausing to read the Bible and truly study it. "She will not be able to wake up except by listening to the Word", he says. It is a challenge that all the pastoral workers in Haiti are now trying to meet. First of all through the creation of a catechetical centre, where priests, religious and committed lay pastoral workers will be able to go, once a month, to draw new strength, together with the bishops, so that they can better understand the central Person of the Gospels and what His life should mean for the Church -- Jesus.
Next, the change will likewise be wrought through reconfiguring the parish, so that it can "become the place of the announcement of the kerygma, the proclamation of the Word". Archbishop Kébreau is conscious that "here there is an enormous task of awareness-raising to be done in order to bring the Word to the heart of people's lives". The parishes will be called to make room for fraternities, for small communities, "so that they can listen to the Word, starting from the places where people actually live".

Evangelising in depth

Finally, in a country where voodoo is very much present, is faith not tied to proofs of the presence of God, such as miracles? Archbishop Kébreau believes we must go deeper than this. "Has the Gospel really reached my deepest instincts? Has the Gospel got through to our instincts for destruction, for construction?" He also questions the place the Gospel holds in our lives: Is it truly is the "driving force"? "How much do we know of the Gospel?", he asks. They are questions addressed first of all to the pastoral workers of the Church -- the priests, the bishops, the male and female religious. "Because, to begin with, we have been very much more 'sacramentalised' than evangelised", the archbishop believes. It should be an evangelisation "that challenges us to reexamine our hearts... and truly reflect: 'Who is Jesus?'." Such a pastoral programme for Haiti, truly centred on the Word, would "bring us light", so that we can truly know "how to position ourselves today so that we can help this people to discover what is true faith and not simply belief", he says. So belief and faith are different things, Monsignor? "All the things that the world repeats, the jargon of the tribe", this is belief. "But faith has a 'personalising' dimension and draws us on to discover our identity as a child of God", he tells us.

Epilogue

We had started by talking to Archbishop Kébreau about Haiti. But his words on the "Word" have touched on the essence of what every Christian, from Port-au-Prince to Bangkok, should seek to attain -- this identity as a "child of God". Just like believers, like those "who have faith" all over the world, the Haitians too will thus be able to reconstruct their interior landscape. From this soul, imbued with the Gospel, life will thereby spring forth, despite all obstacles, and will then be able to build everything on the exterior. That is hope indeed!
Last year ACN supported over 50 different pastoral projects in Haiti.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org