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January 2011

January 2

The Church: One Year Fades Another Begins to Emerge

January 2, 2011

Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone and the Feast of Three Kings/Epiphany is upon us. For both the religious and secular media it is a time for reflection as well as speculation: what were the key points of the year just past, what looms as the issues of the coming year. (and while some Catholic commentators dismiss New Year’s Day reflections as ‘non-Catholic’ or non-religious…most go with the flow and acknowledge that benchmarks are benchmarks with even the head of Vatican Radio joining the fray). There are some common themes: the clerical abuse scandal everywhere, Papal trips to Malta, the UK, Spain and the main synagogue in Rome, the on-going eruption over what the Pope did or didn’t say and mean or didn’t mean on the question of condoms, the impact of The Year of The Priest and the ‘crossing the Tiber of Anglicans adhering to Rome. All of these stories speak to a Church wrestling with the world and within itself. It has not been a year where dull was not the apt adjective. It also seems inevitable that the issues raised on the Papal Journeys, with the Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal, about condoms or even Anglicans are issues that will continue to be present in the coming year. John Allen Jr. at the National Catholic Reporter has his own list of the five most underreported Vatican Stories of the year and it makes for fascinating reading. Two of the stories that make his list concern the Vatican Bank and Anti-Christian terror attacks both of which were in the news as 2010 morphed into 2011. The Pope announced new measures to deal with money laundering and transparency at the Vatican Bank and Christians in Egypt were subjected to yet another terrorist bombing. One issue the Pope raised frequently during the year was the vital necessity enmeshed within the question of religious freedom: whether in the Mid-East Synod (another one of the ‘underreported stories’), in exchanges with Iran, while preaching in London or Barcelona, or in his annual message for World Day of Peace, as reported in the Catholic Register. And while the attacks on Christians in the Middle East appear to be escalating it is an issue that heats up in a less violent but perhaps as dangerous a way in the growing confrontation with China over religious freedom there. And as 2011 opened it became clear that the issue would continue to pre-occupy his Holiness. He announced that in August he would host an inter-faith congress in Assisi, an event that will mark the 25th anniversary of a similar summit hosted by John Paul II.

January 3

Pope begins new year with call for religious freedom, end to violence

January 3, 2011

[images/stories/PopeBenedictXVI/popeEaster.jpg]VATICAN CITY - Opening 2011 with a strong call for religious liberty, Pope Benedict XVI condemned deadly attacks against Christians and announced a new interfaith meeting next fall in Assisi, Italy. At a Mass Jan. 1 marking the World Day of Peace and a blessing the next day, the Pope voiced his concern about fresh episodes of violence and discrimination against Christian minorities in the Middle East. In particular, the Pope condemned an attack Jan. 1 against Orthodox Christians in Egypt, calling it a "despicable gesture of death." A bomb that exploded as parishioners were leaving a church in Alexandria, Egypt, left 25 people dead and dozens more injured. The Pope said the attack was part of a "strategy of violence that targets Christians," and which has negative repercussions on the entire population. He offered prayers for the victims and their families.

January 4

Crisis team hits Ajax school in wake of teacher's murder charge

January 4, 2011

AJAX, Ont. A crisis response team helped students at Ajax's St. Francis de Sales Elementary School cope with the news that one of their teachers has been accused of trying to kill his wife while on a pre-Christmas Jamaican vacation. Tracy Barill, superintendent of education for the Durham Catholic District School Board, visited the school Jan. 3, the first day of classes for students returning from the Christmas break, along with the board's crisis response team led by the board's chief psychologist, Dr. Ian Brown.

January 5

Former Anglican bishops received into Catholic Church

January 5, 2011

[images/stories/PopeBenedictXVI/popeBenedict1.jpg]LONDON (CNS) — Three former Anglican bishops were received into the Catholic Church just hours after they officially gave up their ministries in the Church of England. Bishops Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet, John Broadhurst of Fulham and Keith Newton of Richborough will be soon ordained as priests for a special Anglican ordinariate that will be set up in England later in January. Their resignations took effect at midnight Dec. 31, and they were received into the Catholic Church the afternoon of Jan. 1 during a Mass in London's Westminster Cathedral. They will be ordained as Catholic deacons at Allen Hall seminary, London, Jan. 13, then as priests at a ceremony in the cathedral Jan. 15. They will be incardinated into the English ordinariate, which is expected to be formed by papal decree the second week of January, when Pope Benedict XVI is also expected to appoint an ordinary.

Coptic leaders say attack reflects Egypt 'Islamization'

January 5, 2011

Egypt protest [images/stories/misc/misc11/egypt.jpg]VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Leaders of the Coptic Catholic Church in Egypt said a deadly attack against Christian worshipers was an act of political destabilization and a sign of the increasingly radical "Islamization" of the country. "The newspapers are pointing the finger at al-Qaida. But terrorism arises in sectors of the Muslim society where other organizations encourage intolerance. For 40 years in Egypt, there has been a creeping Islamization that pervades every area of society," said Coptic Auxiliary Bishop Kamal Fahim Awad Hanna of Alexandria. Bishop Hanna told the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Jan. 3 that the government was making every effort to ensure the safety of worshipers as they prepared for the Coptic celebration of Christmas Jan. 7. All Christian churches have been surrounded by security forces, he said.

Pope John Paul II miracle nears final recognition

January 5, 2011

Pope John Paul II [images/stories/historical_people/PopeJohnPaulII/JPII.jpg]VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A presumed miracle needed for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II reportedly has reached the final stages of approval. The miracle — involving a French nun said to have been cured of Parkinson's disease — has been approved by a Vatican medical board and a group of theologians and is now awaiting judgment from the members of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, according to Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli. If the congregation accepts the healing as a miracle attributable to the late Pope's intercession, then Pope Benedict XVI still would have to sign a decree formally recognizing it before a beatification ceremony can be scheduled.

Local Copts fear Al Qaeda threats

January 5, 2011

TORONTO Toronto’s Catholic Copts are just as worried as their Orthodox brethren about Internet threats of an Al Qaeda operation in North America. The much larger Coptic Orthodox community has initiated meetings with police to discuss security in the wake of a New Year’s Eve bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, that killed 21 and wounded about 100. Fr. Bishoy Y Anis of Toronto’s Holy Family Coptic Catholic Church, however, is just as worried about the safety of the 250 to 300 families in his Catholic parish.

Changes to national Jewish group could affect interfaith dialogue

January 5, 2011

Canadian Jewish Congress [images/stories/logos/logos11/cjc.jpg]After more than 30 years of official dialogue and 60 years of nurturing a genuine bond, Christians and Jews in Canada may be looking at a new relationship as the organization which has represented the Jewish side in the dialogue is either phased out of existence or significantly reorganized. The Canadian Jewish Congress, the 91-year-old organization that represents the interests of most Canadian Jews, could cease to exist as early as June. That doesn’t mean Catholics won’t have a Jewish partner in the dialogue next year, but it may mean a more limited focus on Israel and related political issues, Catholic and Jewish dialogue partners told The Catholic Register. Dr. Victor Goldbloom, who has participated in official Christian-Jewish dialogue in Canada since the first body was established in 1977 — and unofficially since he became a friend of Cardinal Paul-Emile Leger in Montreal in the 1950s — said there’s no indication a new Jewish organization would seek to replace Jewish representatives in Christian-Jewish dialogue. Though Goldbloom fears a more narrow and partisan organization may replace the CJC, he doesn’t believe a more intense focus on lobbying and advocacy will change interfaith relationships. Goldbloom praised the Catholic side in the dialogue as “rock solid” despite the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

A Haitian solution

January 5, 2011

Haiti new generation [images/stories/international/internation11/newhaiti.jpg]Haiti’s late-afternoon earthquake last Jan. 12 devastated the impoverished nation in less than 60 seconds. Twelve months and many promises later reconstruction has barely begun. That sad reality is a reflection of Haiti’s political fragility and the world’s inability to rapidly respond to a catastrophe that killed an estimated 230,000 people, injured 300,000 more and left more than one million homeless. As Haitians mark the first anniversary of the tragedy it remains imperative that the international community neither forget nor abandon them. This edition of The Catholic Register includes a nine-page section that revisits Haiti one year after the 7.0 earthquake focused world attention on the shattered nation. Associate editor Michael Swan went to Haiti to report on whether the world has lived up to promises made in the aftermath of the quake, when the international community pledged $5.7 billion in aid. Canadians sent more than $200 million in emergency relief, much of it collected through Catholic charities.

Take away the sin of the world

January 5, 2011

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) Jan. 16 (Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; Psalm 40; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34) What does it mean to be a servant? The word has been tarnished a bit in our own time for it conjures up the images of class and privilege. But in the spiritual sense being a servant means nothing more (or less) than doing the will of God consistently. The mysterious and nameless Servant that Isaiah portrays is one who has been marked out for this mission from the moment he was conceived. He is addressed as “Israel” in a couple of instances, signifying that his actions and the fate of Israel are inextricably bound. His job is overwhelming: He is to restore and renew the people of Israel, who have been broken and spiritually compromised by the long exile in Babylon. But his mission goes far beyond that. In Isaiah the vision of a universal mission for Israel begins to unfold. Israel’s call from God is on behalf of all humanity. The servant is the model and paradigm for all who seek to love and serve God. It defined the life and ministry of Jesus and it should define the life of all who claim to follow Him. One’s response in faith to God’s call goes far beyond “getting saved” or going to heaven — it is a commitment for service to the world and to humanity. True religion is about service and compassion. Being a servant of God finds its finest expression in being a person for others.

In communion with Christian brethren

January 5, 2011

One day recently, a friend was wrestling with the meaning of communion. He’d heard a homily delineating the proper way to receive the host so as to avoid dropping it. All very practical. But, my friend asked, is that all there is to say? Doesn’t communion mean more to us than rubrics?

It's 2011 and anything can happen this year

January 5, 2011

An odd thing happened shortly after I wrote my article on Mozart’s Requiem Mass. But to understand it, you have to understand something about Edinburgh. Edinburgh’s slums were destroyed after the Second World War, and the Edinburgh poor were transported to housing projects or “estates” on the outskirts of the city. To get to my home just beyond the city limits, I take a bus through one of the city’s most depressed neighbourhoods.

The Church was never in cahoots with the Nazis

January 5, 2011

It has become almost habitual for critics of the Church to allege that Catholics collaborated with or were even responsible for Hitler and the Nazis. It’s a shrill and clumsy accusation, but how it hurts and how it sticks. In his latest book, The Third Reich: A New History, British academic Michael Burleigh establishes himself as one of the finest and surely most interesting historians writing today and, at least in the thinking world, should put the final stake in the body of this cruel myth. I’m not sure if the author of six books of modern European history is a Catholic, but I doubt it. What I do know for certain is that he writes with a penetrating understanding of the place of the Church in recent history, the persecution of Catholicism under Marxist and fascist dictatorship, and the absurdity of linking Nazism to Catholic Christianity. “The Nazis despised Christianity for its Judaic roots, effeminacy, otherworldliness and universality. It appeared life-denying to the life-affirming,” writes Burleigh. “Forgiveness was not for resentful haters, nor compassion of much use to people who wanted to stamp the weak into the ground. In a word, Christianity was a soul malady.” He shows what has been demonstrated for some years now, that the higher the Catholic population in pre-war Germany, the lower the vote for the National Socialists. This is not occasional but iron-clad. In Bavaria but also in every German region with a sizeable Catholic electorate, the Nazis failed to win elections. Yet still we are told that Hitler was a Catholic, that many of his leading supporters were faithful Catholics and that the Church supported Nazism. There is not room in a column to explore complex history, but we have to be able to counter lies with truth. As with Voltaire’s anti-Semitism, some of the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews was rooted in the fact that Judaism gave us Christ. From the beginnings of Hitlerism in the 1920s, right up until the demise of the regime in 1945, the most organized and courageous attacks on Nazism came from Catholics. They were reacting out of belief, but also out of simple self-defence. From 1933 the Nazis had banned feast days, attempted to remove Christmas and Easter from the calendar, led mass arrests of priests and religious, smeared excrement on church doors and altars, smashed rectory windows, criminalized Catholic youth organizations, depicted priests in Nazi propaganda as sexual deviants, forced the removal of crucifixes from schools and public buildings and murdered millions of Roman Catholics in death camps. This is not what the Jewish people suffered, and any attempt to equate the experience of the Church with that of the Jews is macabre and misplaced. One was persecution, the other was genocide. But it is also immoral to minimize the pain of Catholics during the Nazi era and to claim that the Church is somehow to blame for fascist lunacy. Obviously there were people who claimed Catholicism but acted contrary to their supposed faith, as well as people born Catholic who had long since abandoned the Church. There were also Catholics, including some in leading positions, who shared the nationalism, fear of Bolshevism and even anti-Semitism of the Nazis. But there were relatively few. More common were the Catholic resisters in the military, the civil service, the media and throughout German society. More than individual or organized opposition, however, was the direct clash between Catholic and Nazi teaching. The first victims of Nazi eugenics were not Jews but Polish intellectuals and German and Austrian psychiatric patients. The primary aim of Nazism was not only to rid the world of the Jewish people but to establish a pagan empire where race-consciousness and the cult of the collective triumphed over God-consciousness and individual salvation. Marriage was to be exploited only as a means for procreating Aryans, adultery was permitted if it led to more “breeding,” the Jewish Messiah was to be despised, papal authority destroyed and the Church replaced by the worship of northern gods. It might not be the history presented on television and in the popular press, but it’s the genuine article rather than an artificial facsimile. The Nazis obscured the facts, let’s not follow their filthy example.

Young Catholics RiseUp to be counted

January 5, 2011

An annual highlight arrives in the last days of the year. That’s when Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) holds its annual conference for university students. They call it RiseUp, and it begins each year on Dec. 28 and runs through New Year’s Day. I first went in 2004 in Toronto, in my first year as chaplain of Newman House at Queen’s University. Completely conquered by the experience, I have returned every year since as it has travelled around the country — Vancouver, Quebec City, Calgary, Toronto again, Winnipeg, and this year in Montreal. Not all Catholics in Canada know about CCO, but they should. It is one of the most powerful works of the Holy Spirit in our country and a testament that the Gospel has not lost its power to attract souls — even those of the young. Andre and Angele Regnier founded CCO in 1988 in Saskatoon, realizing that the university campus was indeed mission territory. While in previous generations it would have been enough to merely provide services for practising Catholic students, the current situation requires evangelization. CCO’s premise is that most students on campus, including those from Catholic homes, have never heard the “Gospel preached simply and clearly.” So they do it. CCO full-time missionaries are usually recent university graduates themselves, and they raise all of their own income personally. Can you imagine the zeal for the Gospel and the trust in Providence required to accept that mission? There are dozens of them at campuses from Vancouver to Halifax, and they are evangelizing thousands of university students. To be with some 500 of those students in Montreal was a pure gift and why I have already booked the 2011 RiseUp in Vancouver on my calendar. “CCO is a university student movement dedicated to evangelization,” says the mission statement. “We challenge students to live in the fullness of the Catholic faith, with a strong emphasis on becoming leaders in the renewal of the world.” A key word there is fullness. They invite students to be more Catholic, not less. They understand that at the heart of the faith is the person of Jesus Christ. They teach people to pray. They encourage reception of the sacraments, especially promoting confession. Eucharistic adoration is central. The Holy Spirit is not neglected. They read the Scriptures devotedly. They present the magisterial teaching of the Church with confidence in the truth, not a grudging attitude. They present the Catholic faith as a joy to be embraced, not a burden to be borne. They are a model for how the Church should evangelize a culture where God is at the margins. And if all this can be done on the university campus, where hostility to religion and scepticism about truth often dominate the local culture, then there are sure grounds for hope that the Gospel has not lost its power. Bringing 500 faithful young Catholics to Montreal is a challenge. Montreal is likely the least-practising major city in the Catholic world. For generations in Montreal the only real question has been whether the Church would withdraw from the culture before it was pushed out, or vice versa. The grand Notre Dame in Old Montreal now charges admission, exempting those who come to pray. Just like the admission charge at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s signals the collapse of the Church of England as a culture-shaping institution, so too does Notre Dame indicate a general attitude that what used to be is not and never shall be again. A culture that cannot support its principal shrines converts them to de facto museums, but they stand as tombstones — markers of places where the faith is dead. So when a number of students at RiseUp went to Notre Dame for Mass, the cashier was sceptical that so many young people would actually want to do so. Surely it was some kind of trick to avoid paying the fee. Yet they prevailed, and it stands as a symbol of what these marvellous young Catholics do — overcome the scepticism of so many in the Church that the fullness of the Catholic faith still attracts souls to Jesus Christ. To see the Oratory of St. Joseph and Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral both filled with young people on fire for their faith, this is what the Church in Canada needs. Whatever travails each year brings, at RiseUp the year ends full of Christian hope.

January 6

Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]

January 6, 2011

A tour of churches in Port-au-Prince shows how the destruction left by the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake remains undistrubed. The earthquake killed Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot inside his cathedral instantly, and Vicar General Charles Benoit later. Bodies remain under much of the rubble around the capital city because Haiti lacks the heavy equipment and other resources to clean up. View a larger version of the slideshow by clicking the "expand" icon in the bottom right corner of the player. You can also turn on captions and credits.

Raising up Haiti: A Catholic Register Special Report

January 6, 2011

Haiti building [images/stories/features/freature11/haitismile.jpg]On the anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude Haiti earthquake that killed 230,000 people, The Catholic Register has compiled a special report on reconstruction efforts in the impoverished nation. At 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti was devastated. The quake’s epicentre was 16 km west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, home to 3.5-million people. Large sections of the city were flattened and virtually every building damaged. Hospitals, schools and government buildings collapsed on their inhabitants. The city’s cathedral crumbled, killing Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot. An estimated 1.5-million people were made homeless. The international community sent emergency supplies, money and manpower, and pledged $5.3 billion for long-term reconstruction. Canadian Catholics contributed more than $20 million to Haitian relief. To mark the first anniversary of the quake, The Register dispatched Associate Editor Michael Swan to Haiti to document the reconstruction effort. He saw a nation still clearing rubble from streets, still coping with tent cities, still flinching from crime, still living day to day. The rebuilding has begun but it is sporadic and not always well co-ordinated. But The Register’s veteran reporter also witnessed hope and resilience and even some joy. “Haitians are the world champions of the brave face,” he writes. “They make British stiff upper lips look wobbly as Jello.” One year on, we should pause to remember Haiti. Its needs remain great. In the articles listed below, Swan tells Haiti’s story in words and photos. - RAISING UP HAITI - A CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL REPORT HAITI'S CHURCHES NEED HEALING [SLIDESHOW] WHAT NOW IN HAITI? POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS PROVES DIFFICULT CATHOLIC AID ORGANIZATIONS FLY UNDER THE RADAR CANADIAN ENGINEER TO OVERSEE HAITI’S CHURCH REBUILD HAITI MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE CRISIS MAKES D&P RETHINK HOW IT OPERATES BOLD EDUCATION PLAN HELD UP BY A LACK OF FUNDS CHURCH HOLDS COMMUNITY TOGETHER D&P-FUNDED PROGRAM PROVIDES PRO-LIFE SOLUTION TO HAITI'S SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAITIANS MUST LOOK TO THEMSELVES TO REBUILD THEIR NATION

What now in Haiti?

January 6, 2011

Haiti build [images/stories/features/freature11/haiticover.jpg] From inside a brown, battered SUV, with the doors locked and the windows up, and in the company of a seasoned Haitian driver, the Petionville Market after dark is as frightening as any place I’ve ever been. I have in my time been pushed around and spat on in a back alley in Xian, China. I wandered after dark through Harlem, Times Square, South Bronx and the Bowery in my student days. I’ve crawled over piles of garbage and explored the unlit streets of Nairobi’s slums. I’ve tried photographing the slums of Rio, while the taxi driver yelled at me to get back in the cab. I’ve walked by guards with machetes and automatic rifles to interview people in El Salvador. I’ve questioned people inside homeless shelters and prisons. I’ve been threatened by Toronto drug dealers who didn’t like the presence of a camera on their street. I’ve had good and sensible reasons to be scared in my career. But I’ve never been any place where the level of threat was as pervasive and constant as it is in Haiti. I’ve never been in a place that could make me feel afraid while sitting with three other people inside a locked car as it crawled along the street, with a crush of ghostly bodies slipping by our windows in the darkness. No doubt, pre-earthquake Haiti was a dicey sort of place for outsiders. In 1994 Haitian gang members scared off the U.S. Marines with machetes and stones before America’s elite soldiers had even landed on Haitian soil. The earthquake, I believe, has raised it all up a notch or two. There’s nothing like the uncertainty of chaos to make us afraid. The piles of rubble, the half-collapsed buildings, the razor wire stretched along sections of cracked and crumbling walls give no indication of order in Haiti’s capital. The market outside Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral in Port-au-Prince looks like a tidy, predictable, suburban shopping mall compared to the Petionville Market at night, but still every little pile of goods from used auto parts, to cigarettes, to batteries, to discarded office furniture, shoes and on and on looks like contested territory. And every merchant is accompanied by a scowling, oversized partner sizing up each customer who approaches and every non-customer who passes by. I did not go to Haiti to hear another recap of the shock and distress of Jan. 12, 2010. Of course I spoke to people who lost their children, their grandfathers, their wives and their husbands. I spoke to a young woman who spent five hours trapped in the rubble. I also spoke to peasant farmers as they were recovering from torrential rain brought by Hurricane Tomas — hours and hours huddled under a sheet of tin where their house used to be, as rain threatened to wash away everything. Then they reached back 10 months and told me about the terror of seeing their houses collapse and walking to Port-au-Prince to search for their families. “While we were walking to Port-au-Prince we had to walk around cadavers,” said Fritz Ner-Sérénium. With 230,000 dead, more than half of Port-au-Prince still in ruins, over a million people still living under tarpaulins or in tents, there are far too many of those stories to even begin. And repetition adds little in the way of insight. The Catholic Register wanted to know, what now? After a year, what has happened and what direction is Haiti taking? If there were a simple, definite answer the question wouldn’t be worth asking. Journalists ask questions that have more than one answer because multiple, even conflicting answers are closer to the truth of a complex world. But some truths are unambiguous. One of them is that 10 months living in a tent is hard. Redemptorist Fr. Adonai Jean-Juste sat with me on a bench in the midst of what used to be his home staring straight ahead, hardly able to gather the energy to answer questions. “Living in the tent is not easy. I want to get out of the tents. It’s too much for me now, living in the tents,” he said. A construction crew of five men was busy on the other side of the line of tents where four Redemptorists live, mixing cement, piling up rebar, getting ready to start rebuilding the walls that will house the four religious — two men studying for priesthood, a brother and their superior Jean-Juste. “I see the presence of God in the earthquake. Many people died. Many, many people died. We didn’t have the means to bury them,” he said. “But everyone was living in the open air and it didn’t rain. That was a surprise. I think God was with other people who died. I think maybe it was His will. It was their time.” Haitians are the world champions of the brave face. They make British stiff upper lips look look wobbly as Jello. The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception are all business — entirely consumed by their mission to educate the girls and rebuild the school. Meanwhile the nine sisters are living in four tiny classrooms, their possessions piled up in an old box car, praying the morning office in a crowded little corner next to the one sink they all share. They spend all day outside under the cruel gaze of the Caribbean sun or under the Unicef tarpaulins where they teach 40 girls at a time. They will only talk about the school, the girls, the community. The closest they come to talking about themselves is when Sr. Josette Drouinard lets slip her dream that one day the students will have a chapel and auditorium — some beauty in their lives and not just dust and desks and sun. She doesn’t say that she and her sisters could use a refuge for prayer. Downtown St. Antoine’s school principal Sr. Saint Anne Jean-Baptiste answered my questions with that same distant stare and weariness as Jean-Just. Except that in the sister’s case no cement is being mixed, no plans are being spread on a wobbly table under another patch of tarp, no promises have been made that the Sisters of St. Anne will have their own school again. We tried to hide from the sun in the only bare sliver of shade available, while the students in their pink dresses dart around us and line up for lunch. Jean-Baptiste allows it is a “difficult situation.” My notes are full of sentences that begin with “no.” “No office.” “No space to work with students.” “No land to build a new school.” “Not getting enough school hours.” (Students that is, whom she fears for the first time in St. Antoine’s history may not pass the state exam that qualifies them to go on to Grade 7.) “We have so many needs, it’s overwhelming,” she said. But each and every Haitian has a memory from the earthquake that doesn’t fill them with horror or overwhelming sadness. After the earthquake Haitians stood together atop the rubble and dug. They moved hunks of concrete together, passing the pieces of their former city from hand to hand. Haitians were together. They cared for one another. “It brought people together. There was solidarity,” said Yolette Jeanty. That concrete memory of post-earthquake Haiti stripped down to it’s core, when Haitians had nothing but each other, is not a memory of violence or greed or humiliations or vengeance. For lack of any better word, it is a memory of love — true love, not sentimentality. It was the love that binds us together and makes society possible. It is the love that makes God present and promises a future. - RAISING UP HAITI - A CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL REPORT HAITI'S CHURCHES NEED HEALING [SLIDESHOW] WHAT NOW IN HAITI? POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS PROVES DIFFICULT CATHOLIC AID ORGANIZATIONS FLY UNDER THE RADAR CANADIAN ENGINEER TO OVERSEE HAITI’S CHURCH REBUILD HAITI MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE CRISIS MAKES D&P RETHINK HOW IT OPERATES BOLD EDUCATION PLAN HELD UP BY A LACK OF FUNDS CHURCH HOLDS COMMUNITY TOGETHER D&P-FUNDED PROGRAM PROVIDES PRO-LIFE SOLUTION TO HAITI'S SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAITIANS MUST LOOK TO THEMSELVES TO REBUILD THEIR NATION

Post-traumatic stress proves difficult

January 6, 2011

Haiti camp boy [images/stories/features/freature11/campboy.jpg] Children, lost and disoriented, looking for a safe place after the earthquake found it in the courtyard of the Holy Cross Sisters. For more than a week the children were crowded in, occupying the driveway and the garden and reluctant to spend much time under the Sisters’ rather sturdy roof. Of course they were troubled and traumatized, said Sr. Marie-Pierre Saint Amour. She didn’t need her training in psychology from the University of Ottawa to tell her that. She heard the children’s cries at night when nightmares woke them. She saw the angry face of the devil in their drawings. Since then, Saint Amour has come to realize her whole country is suffering from a sort of mass post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s had some success treating the young people, but how do you administer psychotherapy to a nation? “Everyone is focussed so much on the medical, but forgetting the psychological,” said Fr. Michel Martin Eugene, a Holy Cross priest and psychologist. There are fewer than six psychiatrists in all of Haiti, Dr. Peter Kelly said. Kelly is president of the Crudem Foundation, which runs Sacre Coeur Hospital in Milot with the support of three American groups of the Order of Malta and Catholic Relief Services. Kelly and other volunteer doctors in Haiti after the earthquake observed widespread post-traumatic stress syndrome. They also saw that most Haitian medical staff were reluctant to diagnose depression or PTSD. “I believe it has something to do with their culture, as well as the fact that they have faced so many hardships throughout their history that they accept it as normal and move on with their lives,” Kelly wrote in an e-mail. Unlike the doctors, Haiti’s religious see psychotherapy as an essential, missing piece of the recovery. Working with students in education and social work, the Psychosocial Support Network of the Haitian Religious Conference has created a program to help people face trauma that has often been ignored for months while they dug out their neighbours, tracked down lost family members, went back to work and managed life in a tent. In many cases, depression, anxiety and all-pervading fear hit people months after the earthquake, said Saint Amour. “They never dealt with the trauma, then they are hit with a lack of energy, depression.” “It’s a big crisis,” said Eugene. “They wander the street — broken people.” Eugene’s assessment of the situation is rare among Haitians, who “are so stoic,” said Kelly. “It is also difficult to institute training of Haitian medical personnel to treat this problem when they tend to deny its existence,” he said. The Haitian religious network’s psychosocial program, aided by $83,000 from the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, concentrates on Haitians supporting each other — talking through problems with each other in their native Creole. University student Marguerite Charles credits the Sisters and the psychosocial program for helping her. On Jan. 12 she spent between four and five hours trapped in rubble. When she got out her home was gone. “There was shock, trauma. I didn’t feel at ease any more.” Like many Haitians, Charles was afraid to remain indoors for any length of time. The education student now leads a group of teenagers who gather to discuss their experience and their fears. She is passing on the experience of psychological healing she received from the Sisters. She credits Sr. Matilde Moreno with restoring her confidence so she could go back to university. Moreno led the young people in dances and encouraged them to draw and paint, and then got them talking about their fears. Edna Genvieve lives in a tent beside her former home with her daughter. At one point she thought she and her daughter would always live in fear. “After the earthquake, I thought life was over,” she said. “When it rains, I’m still very afraid.” She was even more afraid for her daughter, who over and over drew pictures of the devil. “It’s what she was living,” said Genvieve. Only after her daughter overcame her dread did Genvieve begin to think about the future. “Slowly, slowly I saw that life was still possible through my daughter — that there still is a future,” she said. - RAISING UP HAITI - A CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL REPORT HAITI'S CHURCHES NEED HEALING [SLIDESHOW] WHAT NOW IN HAITI? POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS PROVES DIFFICULT CATHOLIC AID ORGANIZATIONS FLY UNDER THE RADAR CANADIAN ENGINEER TO OVERSEE HAITI’S CHURCH REBUILD HAITI MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE CRISIS MAKES D&P RETHINK HOW IT OPERATES BOLD EDUCATION PLAN HELD UP BY A LACK OF FUNDS CHURCH HOLDS COMMUNITY TOGETHER D&P-FUNDED PROGRAM PROVIDES PRO-LIFE SOLUTION TO HAITI'S SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAITIANS MUST LOOK TO THEMSELVES TO REBUILD THEIR NATION

Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar

January 6, 2011

Haiti tent life [images/stories/features/freature11/tentlife.jpg] Chances are that the first voices you hear in post-earthquake Haiti will have that self-assured twang of Southern Baptists from Houston, Atlanta, Tallahassee or Nashville. They land in bunches at Toussaint Louverture International Airport wearing T-shirts that read “Healing Haiti” and other rather proud claims. They’ve come to be with the people of Haiti in whatever way they can. Many of them have real skills, from engineering to medicine to construction. They may be mostly unilingual and perhaps culturally tone deaf, but we should remember that the first Bible translated into Creole was a mostly Baptist effort. Haiti is 80-per-cent Catholic, but Catholic visitors are rarely seen. Catholics are there however, said American Dr. Peter Kelly. “We need to do a better job of educating the world about all that Catholics are doing in Haiti,” he told The Register by e-mail. Kelly is the president of the board of the Crudem Foundation which founded the Sacré Coeur Hospital in Milot. The hospital is supported by three American associations of the Order of Malta, and the board works closely with the Maltesers, the Knights of Malta’s international aid organization. “There are many Protestant groups in Haiti and they are doing a good job providing health care and education,” said Kelly. “However, the Catholic presence in Haiti is much greater but doesn’t seem to get the publicity.” Some of that may have to do with a preference for deferring to Haitian leadership and expertise whenever possible. “Our philosophy has always been to teach the Haitian medical personnel to provide the best care possible for the Haitian people. We have been very successful in our goal and now have 20 Haitian physicians on staff as well as 90 nurses,” said Kelly. “We bring volunteers to our hospital to work side-by-side with Haitian staff providing care to the patients as well as teaching the Haitians and learning from them.” The cholera outbreak in November was a case where Haitians took the lead. Volunteers simply couldn’t get into the country quick enough to help. “Our Haitian administration developed an emergency plan for treatment of the cholera patients and became a cholera treatment centre,” said Kelly. “They did this without any volunteers present in the country, although we provided guidance. When the (Atlanta) Centre for Disease Control inspected our centre we were told that it was the best in the northern part of the country.” When volunteers got there, it was Haitian staff who told them where to be and what to do. “The challenge for the many countries and organizations that are willing to help Haiti is to understand that they need to work with the Haitians, and not dictate the way things need to change and improve.” - RAISING UP HAITI - A CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL REPORT HAITI'S CHURCHES NEED HEALING [SLIDESHOW] WHAT NOW IN HAITI? POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS PROVES DIFFICULT CATHOLIC AID ORGANIZATIONS FLY UNDER THE RADAR CANADIAN ENGINEER TO OVERSEE HAITI’S CHURCH REBUILD HAITI MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE CRISIS MAKES D&P RETHINK HOW IT OPERATES BOLD EDUCATION PLAN HELD UP BY A LACK OF FUNDS CHURCH HOLDS COMMUNITY TOGETHER D&P-FUNDED PROGRAM PROVIDES PRO-LIFE SOLUTION TO HAITI'S SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAITIANS MUST LOOK TO THEMSELVES TO REBUILD THEIR NATION

Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild

January 6, 2011

Haiti church [images/stories/features/freature11/haitichurch.jpg]The huge task of rebuilding the Catholic Church in Haiti will be led by a Canadian civil engineer and project manager who will oversee the first $100 million in construction over the next three years. Yves Lacourciere from Quebec will take over PROCHE, an initiative of the Haitian bishops to rebuild churches, hospitals, schools, a university and a seminary destroyed last Jan. 12 in the devastating earthquake that killed 230,000 people. PROCHE stands for Proximite Catholique avec Haiti et son Eglise or “Catholic nearness to Haiti and its Church.” Lacourciere was to start the project with a four-day meeting with five Haitian bishops Jan. 7 to 10. The meetings are expected to end with an announcement of rebuilding priorities and broad timelines on Jan. 12, the anniversary of the earthquake. “If the goal is to give hope to people in the country, to me it will be that we need to have an action spread throughout the country,” Lacourciere told The Catholic Register. The earthquake destroyed 70 parishes, including the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Port-au-Prince, dozens of schools, several convents and the national seminary, reported Catholic News Service. Three Port-au-Prince archdiocesan leaders —Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, Msgr. Charles Benoit, vicar general, and Fr. Arnoux Chery, chancellor — died in the quake along with seven priests, 31 seminarians and 31 men and women religious. Among the possible priorities for the rebuilding program will be building skills for development among Haitian workers, promoting women through employment in the project, drawing communities together by reconstituting churches, strengthening the bonds between the Catholic Church and Haitian society by repairing the hospital, university and other service institutions and reinforcing the Haitian church by rebuilding the college and major seminary. Lacourciere estimates the total rebuilding effort will last 10 years and cost in the neighbourhood of $300 million. The Quebec engineer with a masters in administration and a PhD in technology, estimates he has been in Haiti 20 to 25 times between the late 1970s and mid-1990s overseeing building projects. He has also worked in the Dominican Republic — the other half of the island of Hispaniola — and Qatar. Following the civil war in Yugoslavia, Lacourciere oversaw engineering and business start-ups in Kosovo between 2000 and 2004. “I am not a specialist. I am a generalist,” said Lacourciere. Being a native French speaker who can communicate directly with Haitian bishops and international diplomats will be an advantage on the job, he said. “I’ve always worked on big jobs,” said Lacourciere. “But what I like with this job is that I can use a lot of experiences I have had in the past. I am more than 60 years old. So, what I want is that what I will do is not for the money. It’s for help. I’m sure that there (in Haiti) I will be able to help.” - RAISING UP HAITI - A CATHOLIC REGISTER SPECIAL REPORT HAITI'S CHURCHES NEED HEALING [SLIDESHOW] WHAT NOW IN HAITI? POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS PROVES DIFFICULT CATHOLIC AID ORGANIZATIONS FLY UNDER THE RADAR CANADIAN ENGINEER TO OVERSEE HAITI’S CHURCH REBUILD HAITI MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE CRISIS MAKES D&P RETHINK HOW IT OPERATES BOLD EDUCATION PLAN HELD UP BY A LACK OF FUNDS CHURCH HOLDS COMMUNITY TOGETHER D&P-FUNDED PROGRAM PROVIDES PRO-LIFE SOLUTION TO HAITI'S SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAITIANS MUST LOOK TO THEMSELVES TO REBUILD THEIR NATION