Contacts & Publisher

Subscription Form

Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2010 /  'It is horrible ... Keep praying'

by Jared Field of The Michigan Catholic
Published January 22, 2010

DETROIT – Dominique Monde-Matthews has waited, watched, prayed and feared for the nation of her birth. In the last 10 days, the life of the Detroit-area pediatrician and child of Haiti has been radically different.

"I would say it's been hell, but it's not as bad as the people who have been living it," said the member of Corpus Christi Parish in northwest Detroit of the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the capital of the island nation, and left 200,000 feared dead. "It has been torture; very hard, to say the least. And frustrating."

All of Monde-Matthews' nearly two dozen relatives are accounted for including her aunt, Nicole St. Victor, who was pulled out of the collapsed Episcopal cathedral in Port-au-Prince with only minor injuries.

Monde-Matthews and her husband, Roger Matthews, are president and chairman, respectively, of the Haiti Outreach Mission (HOM), an ecumenical lay mission group based in Troy. They founded the organization in 1998 after visiting Haiti on their honeymoon.

Monde-Matthews fought back tears as she described the outpouring of support her organization, and many others like it, have received in the aftermath of the disaster.

Monde-Matthews

"I've been very touched by it," she said. "I know how difficult it is with the economy here, and for them to still want to reach out to other people is touching."

Matthews said that he has seen a "large increase" in donations to HOM.

"The contributions have just been unbelievable," said Roger, whose organization recently received a $5,000 donation from Motown legend Aretha Franklin. "It just shows that the word is getting out on who we are and what we're doing after 12 years."

With many of the resources in place, the couple has been working the phones and setting up itineraries for a planned mission trip to Haiti. If Dominique can get flight clearance, she will lead a team of medical personnel to Haiti on Jan. 24.

If the HOM volunteers cannot fly directly into Haiti, they may travel to neighboring Dominican Republic and travel three or four hours by bus into the fault zone. This option was presented to the group by Detroit Lions offensive tackle Gosder Cherilus, who was raised in Haiti and has a home near the hospital HOM plans to serve. Cherilus offered to pay for bus transportation from Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and to lodge members of the group at his home, which was not damaged by the quake. Members of Cherilus' family will also travel with the group.

"That's what we've been working on and every day it's something new," Dominique said. "Hopefully we can just get there, that's all. "I don't know what to expect. I just know it's going to be difficult."

"Why Haiti?"

Auguste

Adeline Auguste, a member of Corpus Christi Parish, cannot make sense of the catastrophe that has gripped the world. The 58-year-old Haitian-American said she can't bear to watch the news.

"I said to myself, 'why Haiti? We don't have anything as it is,'" said Auguste, who was raised in Port-au-Prince, near the epicenter of the quake, before coming to America as a youth. "I don't know how they will rebuild.

"They were already desperate, and now this?"

Auguste's husband, Serge, has been in Haiti visiting family since late December and now has plans to stay for a few extra months to serve a country in misery.

"He is doing all right; everybody is OK in my immediate family," Auguste said. "But I'm still devastated by it." Auguste said that she has been heartened by the outpouring of goodwill from all over the world, but is still troubled by the reactionary nature of the giving.

Jorge Silva, Rueters | CNS | The Michigan Catholic A Haitian woman with a rosary prays during an outdoor Mass held next to the ruins of the Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan 17.

"It is very good, but I think it's a shame that people have to let something like this happen to hear the cry of poor people. It's a natural catastrophe, but why wait to see it with your own eyes, like Thomas?"

Auguste said that the reports from her family members in Haiti are harrowing. Her cousin's house and church were both destroyed. "Everything is just what you see on TV, and it's not just the capital," said Auguste, who has plans to travel to be with her husband in Haiti in March. "People have to sleep in the street. They don't want to go back in their homes."

"The opportunity to help"
Fr. Donald Archambault, of Corpus Christi Parish, the founding parish of HOM, pastors what he calls an "active, close and bonded" group of Haitians.

"We have a number of people from the island," said Fr. Archambault. "They are very actively involved in caring for the people in the homeland."

Fr. Archambault, who has twice visited the island, said that his parish will continue to serve its adopted nation, and all the more during this very difficult time.

"We're going to listen and talk to the people most affected and then figure out how we should respond," he said.

Roger Matthews urged anyone who wants to help to seek out relief organizations in Haiti that, he says, are desperate for support to care for the island's nearly 10 million inhabitants. There are organizations such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which has a team in place in Haiti to deliver life-saving supplies to families affected by the quake.

Fr. Archambault

Fr. Archambault said that his experiences in Haiti have only fueled his resolve to continue to help. "To know that people beyond Haiti have so much interest in them gives them hope," he said.

Archbishop Allen Vigneron called on the priests and people of the archdiocese — and all those in southeast Michigan — to be as generous as possible to the relief efforts under way for the victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake. "We live in challenging financial times here in the Detroit area," the archbishop says, "but that never seems to dampen the generosity of the people of this region when they have the opportunity to help their brothers and sisters in dire need."

UN Photo/Marco Dormino | The Michigan Catholic The remains of the Catholic cathedral of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is seen in a Jan. 15 handout photo provided by the United Nations. Officials with the Catholic aid agency Caritas in Haiti reported that most of the churches in Port -au-Prince had been destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake that rocked the capital.

Among those killed in the quake was Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince, whose body was found under the rubble of his residence on Jan 13.

"'It's a tragedy"
In Philadelphia, Johanna Berrigan, a member of the Catholic Worker movement and a physician's assistant, has traveled to Haiti multiple times with Bishop Thomas Gumbleton as part of a human rights delegation. She's gone to Haiti at least three times a year since 2005, during what she called a critical time for Haiti, after a political coup when the infrastructure was in danger and "huge human rights abuses were happening."

During her visits, she often met with Archbishop Miot. First it was to advocate for Fr. Gerard Jean Juste, then a political prisoner, but also to keep Archbishop Miot informed of the health care work that the group was doing in Haiti. The group sponsors a health care project in Port-au-Prince, Klinik Sen Michel.

Archbishop Miot, who was 63, is being remembered as a humble man who was close to the poor in the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince. For years he served as president of the Haitian bishops' justice and peace commission, and he often spoke of the need to help the citizens of the Western Hemisphere's most-impoverished nation.

"I met him on a number of occasions," she said. "He was a very soft-spoken, gentle caring person. It's a tragedy." Berrigan had been scheduled for a trip to Haiti last November, but stayed home due to the flu. "We know many people, and no one has reported any (other) deaths to us, although their houses were devastated and their friends killed," Berrigan said. "It's just all too hard to comprehend."

She had been planning to visit at the end of January, but now doesn't know how complicated that would be. Still, she's trying to raise funds and gather as many supplies as possible so when they can visit, they can leave immediately.

Berrigan explained that her original goal is to get involved in the community while helping meet their health care needs, as a way of raising the issue of human rights abuses in Haiti. During her trips, she spends a lot of time getting to know the people and helping educate them on public health issues. "My last visit was one of the really truly rewarding visits: I was able to go with the health agents and meet some of the families that they are involved with," she said. That included distributing mosquito nets to families with children and hosting a community meeting to educate people on malaria.

She's expecting it to be an emotional visit when does make it down there again.

JORGE SILVA, Reuters | CNS | The Michigan Catholic Residents walk in a destroyed area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 14, two days following the catastrophic earthquake that struck the Haitian capital.

"What happened to our children?"
St. Blase Parish, Sterling Heights, is part of the Haiti Outreach Mission, an interdenominational effort with St. David Episcopal Church, Southfield, and what is now Corpus Christi Parish, Detroit. The parish has been connected with Haiti Outreach Mission for nearly the past decade, after a priest in Mirebalais, about 40 miles from Port-au-Prince, said they needed an orphanage for children there. St. Blase Parish funded the purchase of the land, and the people of Haiti built the orphanage and named it St. Blase Orphanage in the parish's honor. Claudia Messina, of St. Blase Parish, visited Haiti once in 2008 and is signed up to go in March. Her husband, John, has visited about nine or 10 times and is one of the original HOM members, she said. The HOM not only funds and supports the orphanage, but also a medical clinic with dental services, at which parishioners help out as well. Parishioners go back every year to help with medical exams of the children and to bring supplies and things it needs.

"It was devastating," she said on hearing of the earthquake. "Our first reaction was, 'What happened to our children?'"

Since the earthquake, the parish has had only sporadic contact with the people there, but as Mirebalais is about 40 miles from Port-Au- Prince, as far as Messina can tell they've only suffered minimal damage. A small group from the parish was planning on visiting later this month to work on the orphanage's water system, but as of late last week they were unsure if the trip would proceed as scheduled. There's no telling what the roads are like to Mirebalais, and it's already a rough drive.

St. Blase members also recycle their old cell phones and ink cartridges to benefit the HOM. St. Blase Orphanage was dedicated in May, 2005 and has 100 beds for children; the parish commits $2,500 monthly to support it.

"It's hard for me to even watch it on TV"
At St. Colette Parish, Livonia, many of the parishioners are involved in making blankets, dresses and pants and sending them to Haiti. The parish's pastor, Fr. Henry Roodbeen, had been involved in the parish's mission to Haiti through Food for the Poor, an international relief organization that serves 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, including Haiti, by providing food, homes, water, medicine and education.

Parish secretary Charlene Maurin has visited Port-au-Prince twice with the parish, not doing mission work per se but visiting the places Food for the Poor funds. The group visited a food distribution center, a clinic, a warehouse and a hospital, and brought sports equipment to a boys' orphanage.

When they drove through the poorest section of the city, Maurin remembered it as the "filthiest thing I've ever seen," with people living in tin shacks surrounded by sewage. She saw how poor the people were to begin with — and now they have even less. "I could not believe human beings are forced to live like that," she said. "I saw things I never would have imagined. It's hard for me to even watch it on TV."

The group stayed in Port-au-Prince and visited there and the surrounding areas. "I'm sure a lot of what we have seen was destroyed," she said. "I'm hoping against hope the hospitals and clinics and things we saw are OK, and the people we saw are OK." Maurin, a member of St. Blase, said parishioners will take up a collection for the victims in Haiti through Food for the Poor since they already work closely with them and have seen how they distribute food, water and medical supplies.

"Keep praying"

Fr. Moore

Fr. Thomas Moore, OSFS, who served in the Archdiocese of Detroit in the 1970s and '80s, has been in Haiti since July 2008 doing formation work at his order's formation house in Cite Soleil, one of the most dangerous slums in Haiti. Members of his order, as well as family and friends said getting the following message from him was a relief: "I'm okay thank God. No time to write more. It is horrible...Keep praying. Tom"

From 1974-76 he served at Our Lady Gate of Heaven Parish in Detroit, them moved to the Family Life Center and then taught at St. John Seminary in Plymouth 1979-83.

In Haiti, Fr. Moore also helps a colleague, Fr. Tom Hagan, at the Hands Together program, which feeds more than 2,000 children and seniors daily and offers a school.

Fr. David Whalen, provincial for the Oblates of St. Frances de Sales, Toledo-Detroit Province, said Fr. Moore is on loan to the South American province for an indefinite period.

Local Sylvania Franciscans Safe in Haiti

Sr. Rubbo

Sr. Fidelis Rubbo, a sister of St. Francis of Sylvania who ministers in Haiti, was found safe in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake. Sr. Rubbo attended St. Raphael School in Garden City, where she was born and raised. She is the lead sister in Haiti and has been ministering there for 10 years.

Sr. Rubbo said she felt tremors for about eight seconds a little after 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, but there was no major damage where she lives, around the small town of Pestel, west of Port-au-Prince. Sr. Rubbo had made plans to go to Port-au-Prince that day with a fellow sister, but had not yet left when the earthquake occurred.

Sr. Rubbo works with Haitians around the small town providing medical care and health education to residents in 14 villages in the surrounding area. When Sr. Fidelis first went there 10 years ago there was no organized medical care in the area. They now have two clinics open in the area and a registered nurse, an LPN and an assistant visit all of the villages to examine residents.

— Michigan Catholic staffers Kristin Lukowski and Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO, contributed to this story

• Archdiocese of Detroit responds to the Haiti earthquake crisis