Missio responds to Earthquake in Haiti

Please see below for how you can help and for information from the Church in Haiti

The Church in Haiti has been devastated. The Archbishop of Port-au-Prince died under the rubble, along with hundreds of priests, seminarians and sisters. The very people who should have been providing the urgently needed pastoral care are themselves the victims.  Missio has supported the outreach of the Church in Haiti for many years and it is essential that we help them rebuild their lives and find hope once more.

How You Can Help
You can donate to the Church in Haiti through Missio. Please send cheques (payable to Missio) and write ‘Haiti appeal’ on the back: Missio, 23 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1NU.

To donate by credit card please call 020 7821 9755 during office hours, visit our donations page or click on this direct link on the Charity Choice website:

https://www.charitychoice.co.uk/donation.asp?ref=5524

Your prayers and support are greatly appreciated.

Any help you can give will go directly to the Church in Haiti and will be used for:

• The immediate relief and care of families and orphans ·
• basic and preventative healthcare ·
• major reconstruction of orphanages, schools and seminaries ·
• long-term trauma counselling and pastoral and spiritual care for survivors

For further information please call 020 7821 9755 or email Monsignor John Dale at: director@missio.org.uk      

 

Struggling through the mud of Haiti

 Archbishop Oscar Romero is reported as having said that the time to worry is when a priest is not being killed in the midst of his suffering people. He knew what he was saying. His great friend, Fr Rutilio Grande SJ was tortured and murdered in El Salvador. His death had a profound impact on Romero who later stated, "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, 'If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path'".

Romero saw, time and again, the people of the archdiocese of San Salvador die, often in great pain, at the hands of death squads. Romero was himself assassinated on 24 March 1980 as he celebrated Mass in his cathedral, a single shot killing him as he elevated the Eucharist for the adoration of the congregation.

There is a parallel in Haiti’s earthquake. The Haitian Conference of Religious recently released a draft report on the situation of its Religious communities after the earthquake. It is incomplete, and yet it tells its own story. Thirty of the Congregations represented in Port au Prince have lost houses, schools, clinics, staff and, frequently, community members. The priests and Religious are every bit as destitute and bereaved as the people they are called to serve.

There are still many people in Haiti who are missing family members, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. There is an ongoing search for news and a tragic removal of rubble in the hopes of finding a body that can be buried. It is several days since the last living person was pulled from a ruined building and the hopes of finding more survivors are now at an end.

Religious Congregations are in the same situation. The Conference of Religious has still not managed to establish contact with some of the communities living and working in Port au Prince.

The Religious were both indigenous and missionary. Anybody with missionary experience knows the very close-knit and supportive bond between communities, especially when working for the poor in the midst of the poor. Regardless of differences in outlook and lifestyle, they unite to form one large community, so that something affecting one, affects all. In this way, Haiti’s Religious are all as bereaved and homeless as those they serve. Yet in spite of their personal trauma, they are also united in their responsibility for the delivery of material and pastoral care to others.

St Damian of Molokai became truly authentic when he could stand before his congregation and say, ‘We lepers...’ The same is true for the Religious in Haiti. They can hold their heads high insofar as they can also say, ‘We homeless and bereaved...’ Their words will strike a note of honesty and sincerity as they try to make sense of the earthquake’s devastation for themselves and for those around them. In that way, God is more than ever helping them to practice what they preach, making sense from non-sense.

Some Religious communities are able to offer little more than space in what was their garden for people to erect makeshift shelters. They are equally unable to enjoy fresh water and hygienic facilities. Sometimes their witness will be limited to building some sort of shelter for themselves and others. They will be working with Catholic agencies to care for the sick and injured. They will, even in the rubble, help to provide some sense of normality and stability for children by setting up classrooms amongst the debris where well-run schools used to be. Not all of them will be able to call on emergency funding from their Congregational headquarters and communities beyond Haiti. Many have themselves become beggars, completely dependent on the generosity of others.

Part of Missio’s mandate is to help the Religious to help others. Through its offices in 120 countries across the world, every year, applications for pastoral projects receive funding and the promise of ongoing support. Missio is a lifeline, promising to be there for as long as it is needed by the people of Haiti. It is already looking ahead to the future, examining ways of helping the Religious to rebuild schools, clinics, lives and hope. Missio is one of the ways in which the Church reaches out in love to those who are themselves suffering in the midst of the suffering of others.

At the Mass for the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004, Cardinal Sodano said in his homily, ‘A well-known writer puts an expressive answer on Christ's lips when a poor wayfarer speaks to him after falling into the mud. "Where are you, O my God", the pilgrim cries, sinking into the mire. But he immediately hears a mysterious voice answering him from on high:  "I am with you in the mud!" ‘

The Religious in Haiti are struggling through the mud alongside the rest of the population. Please help us to help them.

You can donate to the Church in Haiti through Missio. For further information, please phone 020 7821 9755 or e-mail Monsignor John Dale at: director@missio.org.uk or visit www.missio.org.uk for website donations