Haitian spirituality: Born in tragedy, devoted to God

Haiti's agony after the Jan. 12 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince called up such glimpses of Haitian Catholics expressing their faith with a characteristic mix of poise, prayerfulness and celebration.

San Francisco, CA (Catholic San Francisco) - At the end of Mass on a Sunday last October in Haiti, something took place that I had never seen before on an altar.

A few of the worshipers gathered for the 7 a.m. service at Notre Dame Cathedral in Cap-Hatien, Haiti's second-largest city, left the pews and formed a line on the altar facing the assembly. The band broke into a swaying, island version of "Happy Birthday".

On the altar, twin boy toddlers dressed in what looked like tiny Easter suits started dancing to the beat. The woman tending them pulled them back with a stern look, admonishing the children for stepping out of line.

Then, the priest put on a bright smile and walked down the line blessing each honoree with a laying on of hands.

The scene left the powerful impression of ordinary individuals being held high by their neighbors in the center of their community's circle, while the community itself was held in the wider circle of a Gospel faith that could never grow old.

The second scene met me when I left the church with the languid "Happy Birthday" still in my head. I walked into freshly swept Cathedral Square - Haitians with brooms had been up at dawn to clean the square and surrounding streets - and stopped at an unexpected sight.

Three long files of crisply uniformed, serious-looking school children were waiting for the next Mass. In a minute I saw the lines move and pour into the cathedral without a waver or a head turning.

The picture of spiritual Haiti was as impressive as, and couldn't have been more different than, the view of economic Haiti I had seen in the clawing futility of a chaotic downtown Cap-Hatien during the afternoon rush two days before on the main highway through town.

Haiti's agony after the Jan. 12 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince called up such glimpses of Haitian Catholics expressing their faith with a characteristic mix of poise, prayerfulness and celebration. But I wasn't aware of the depth of Haitian faith until my search for local reaction to the tragedy led me to Suzette Bertrand, a native of Cap-Hatien and a member of the small Haitian community in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Dominican Sister of Mission San Jose Stella Goodpasture, a member of the Haiti Action Committee in the Bay Area and a three-time visitor to Haiti.

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Bertrand, who is business manager at Sacred Heart Parish in Oakland, remembered growing up in Cap-Hatien in the 1930s and 1940s and attending Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral with her family at 6 every morning.

"Everyone would go there and pray together," she said. "It was the whole city coming to church and praying together. They used to call Haiti the country of the good God. Always, God is good. The presence of God is very real among the people of Haiti."

Bertrand recalled a midnight Mass at Christmas in the early 1940s.

"I left the church at 12 and went back home and I was not afraid," she said. "They had lights in the streets, so I can walk, at 7 (years old), to my house. They didn't have those gangs. I used to find money on the street and we weren't allowed to pick it up - no you don't do that, this is for poor people.

"The mentality changed with Duvalier," said Bertrand, who taught in a Catholic elementary school. Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier was the kleptomaniac strongman who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1971 and plunged the nation into the hemisphere's worst misery. Duvalier's men killed Bertrand's brother and cousin, who were in the army, and terrorized and stole from her father, who had an auto parts business.

"When Duvalier went in power, people didn't trust each other," said Bertrand, who moved to the United States in 1967. "You couldn't talk, you didn't know who that other person was, and sometimes that person would be your cousin, your friend."

Interviewed at her home five days after the earthquake, Bertrand was angry, grieving and exhausted. She had lost 12 friends in the disaster, and had not heard from her half-sister, Francesca, a retired businesswoman in Port-au-Prince. She was angry at the decades of misrule - by Duvalier and by successors she views as no better - that set the stage for the disaster by centralizing the nation's resources in Port-au-Prince and forcing the poor from their farms into servitude in the capital.

Bertrand's pain at the cruelty that resulted from the centralization reminded me of something St. John the Evangelist Sister Nidia Victoria Zuluaga told me in Dajabon, Dominican Republic. The handful of rich and the millions of poor in Haiti have grown to live in different worlds, physically and morally.

"The educated people never want to show that things are as bad as they are," Sister Zuluaga said. "They're embarrassed about other Haitians. It's a cultural battle. They're embarrassed about the poor people."

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Bertrand couldn't help but feel a sense of justice that the earthquake crippled the government.

"That's what I call the cleansing," she said. "They have to go."

The poor were victims as well, but they have been victims since the 1950s, Bertrand said.

"We have to have a closing of the old Duvalier (system), so we can go back to our culture," she said, "because that's not Haitian what they're doing. The people were a good people but with Duvalier they were corrupted. We have to have an end to the corruption."

Sister Goodpasture said she found Haitians to be polite, hospitable, generous and respectful.

"I have never encountered so many people with the same kinds of qualities," she said. "It's a national characteristic. They will not take the first piece of food off the plate. They will wait until everyone is served. This is the kind of spirit they have.

"I find them to be a very religious people," Sister Goodpasture said, recalling a visit to St. Joseph's Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince. All the children at the home were outside when the quake hit and no one was hurt.

"When they have their prayers, this is the style of their prayer," she said. "They stand in a circle, a name is called, and each boy has to name three people that he saw do something wonderful that day.

"I'd have to say it's the Gospel at its best," Sister Goodpasture said." Instead of looking for evil, they're looking for what good this person has done."

The Haitian people started in misery, Bishop Chibly Langlois of the Diocese of Fort Liberte told journalists in October.

We reached Bishop Langlois after driving across the northern plains. Bertrand, a student of Haitian history, told me that the French who colonized Haiti and populated it with African slaves made their riches here. She said sugar cane spread from the road to the foothills, in fields strikingly lacking in life today.

The slaves revolted and Haiti won its independence in 1803. But Haiti, a republic formed by Africans in an overwhelmingly European hemisphere, was feared and shunned.

"A high percentage of people are not educated," Bishop Langlois said, "and if you know the history of Haiti you probably will understand why we are like that. Especially how we were treated after our independence in international relations, is one of the reasons for this misery."

Farid Moise, a member of the Catholic Relief Services staff in Haiti, elaborated.

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"Nobody (wanted) to deal with Haiti," he said. "France made us pay for our independence. We were indentured, the entire island. This entire island was set up with slaves."

Bishop Langlois brought the conversation to a close.

"When we start talking about the story, it will be a long story," he said. "We are not responsible for the situation that we're in, and yet at the same time we are responsible."

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This story was made available to Catholic Online by permission of Catholic San Francisco (www.catholic-sf.org),official newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Calif.