News from Haiti

A message of Thanks from Fr. Claude:

On behalf of all the faithful of the parish of Saint Catherine and on my own behalf, I would like to greet all the faithful of Saint Joseph the Worker while thanking you for all that you are for us, and for everything you do.

There is no need to say how important you are to the parish and to the faithful. Celebrating 15 years of relationship is tender thanks to God for this great blessed gift. Today, thanks to your multiple supports, we are a changed parish. We have a new school. The one the whole community dreamed of. Thanks to your support, we are able to give people access to treated water. Having such a beautiful church construction in the community of Bouzy indicates how much you have demonstrated the desire to accompany us on the path to truth, and to the realization of our dreams.

My dear brothers and sisters of Saint Joseph, we lack words to properly express and translate our gratitude to you. You are in our daily prayers and especially as we celebrate 15 years together.

Thank you, Fr. Claude Telemaque

Our brothers and sisters in Haiti continue to deal with hardships and struggles. Your support means they can afford to educate their children, worship together, and live healthier lives. It gives them hope for the future. This weekend is our semi-annual collection to support our relationship with St. Catherine’s parish. We thank you for your continued prayers, and any donations can be made by cash or check marked for Haiti, or on the parish website.

• Over 15 years ago SJTW began developing a relationship with St Catherine’s in Bouzy Haiti.
• The foundation of how we support each other is first and foremost based on our love of God and the relationship we have between us.
• Over the years we have provided prayers and support to the people of Bouzy by partnering with them on various programs like clean water, medical, education, building a new church, and ongoing support in helping them work through daily challenges such as lack of food, repairs to vehicles, medical costs for ill priests etc.
• One of the greatest gifts we provide to each other is praying together.
• We often share our special intentions with each other, and we pray together for those intentions.
• It is customary for parishes to pray the novena leading up to their Feast Day.  
• St Catherine’s Feast Day is November 25^th.
• In Bouzy, they pray the novena for the 9 days leading up to November 25 
• Then, on November 25 they have a celebration in honor their patron saint, St. Catherine.  This celebration includes a special mass with many priests from the area participating, followed by a shared meal and fellowship.
• This year, in concert with St. Joe’s Prays, we are learning how to pray a novena.  
• As witness to our love of God and in solidarity with the people of Bouzy, we invite all of St Joseph the Worker to join our friends in Bouzy in praying the Novena to St Catherine of Alexandria Nov 16- Nov 24^th.

The reason for our partnership goes beyond responding to their lack of basic needs. We go to share God’s love and build friendships. This relationship creates an opportunity to see and understand poverty through someone else’s eyes. Reflecting on the relationship over 15 years, we can better understand their way of life, and we have experienced their joy and felt their suffering. 
Getting to know the people of St. Catherine’s has been a great blessing for our parish: They have shared their love, joy, hospitality, prayers, resilience, and gratitude with us. Many people in their community lack their basic daily needs and continually deal with hardships, yet they continue to have confidence in God. They show what true faith looks like by putting their complete trust in Him.
As we have walked with them, we have gained a new perspective. It is easier to see God in all things large and small and to trust He is with us every day. 

Supporting Education at St. Catherine’s Schools
This year we celebrate 15 years of sisterhood with St Catherine’s in Bouzy, Haiti. At the very beginning of our relationship, the call to support the children of St Catherine’s in education was clear. The cost to educate a child fully can place great strain on families and their resources. Our early support for the schools was bringing many large suitcases with donated school supplies for the students. After visits and talks with the parish’s pastor, community leaders, and representatives from St Joseph’s, we formed a partnership to support them in providing tuition relief to lower costs, so that as many children could attend school as possible. Through the generous donations and support of parishioners of St Joseph the Worker we have been able to reduce costs of tuition for all grade levels. The attendance has increased over the years and now St Catherine’s support well over 500 children learning with your help. After 15 years, despite earthquakes and hurricanes, despite distance, cultural and language barriers; education continues to be a focal point of our relationship with the people of St Catherine’s in Bouzy. Thank you!

As we continue to celebrate our relationship with St. Catherine’s parish in Haiti, there is a new display under the large banners in St Joe’s Hall. It features a timeline of events and photos from our 15 year history, starting in 2009 up to the present. Check it out to see how we began and how it has grown.

New Church

The little church of St. Catherine de Alexandre was filled with joyful music every time we visited during the first 10 years of our sister parish relationship. However, after being damaged in the 2010 earthquake, the 70-year-old church was destroyed overnight by a windstorm in January 2019. For the past 5 1/2 years, the faithful of St. Catherine's have been worshipping outdoors.
After a year of planning, we partnered with the people of St. Catherine's to construct a new church, following the design of Engineer Michelet. Thanks to your incredible generosity, we contributed $299,000 in stages between 2020 and 2023 to complete the basic structure, as well as to address repairs and modifications needed after the 2021 earthquake.
Now, we are raising an additional $45,000 to install doors, windows, and electricity so that our sisters and brothers in Bouzy can finally realize their dream of celebrating Mass in the new church on St. Catherine's Feast Day, November 25, alongside the entire community.
The final touches—painting, tiling, and interior furnishings—will then remain. Through their sacrifices and your support, our sisters and brothers in Haiti will soon have a beautiful new home in which to worship, praise God, and continue building their community of faith, hope, and love

Our Haiti medical mission is focused around the Bouzy Health Dispensary. The Dispensary is staffed by a government appointed physician that changes yearly, two nurses and a lab technician. The dispensary is less than one block from St. Catherines of Bouzy Church. Our support has helped establish a 90% vaccination rate program supported by the world health organization. This is ongoing. We help provide a regular supply of medications including antibiotics, blood pressure and diabetic medications, as well as numerous over the counter products: tylenol, motrin, eye drops, reading glasses, antibiotic and anti-fungal creams. Under the direction of Dr. Mark Millis, a comprehensive hypertension and diabetes preventative health program was instituted. In addition, an intestinal deworming program was implemented, including education and medications for families participating in the clean water systems we provide. Our support has helped provide basic health care needs to our Bouzy family that we often take for granted in the US. Thank you for your continued support of this vital mission.

One of the many challenges the people of Haiti face is securing clean water for daily living.  Without clean water, many get sick and some may die from water borne diseases such as cholera, yet the incidents of illness are lower in Bouzy because of the work we are doing.  We are teamed with an organization called Gift of Water to help provide water filtration systems to the people of Bouzy.  Since the start of the water program in 2012, we have invested over $66,000 into the program.  We covered the costs to install 700 water systems in Haitian homes. We have also provided repair parts, and over 800,000 Aqua-tab chlorine tablets used to sanitize water.  To sustain the program, we have trained several technicians over the years and currently employ 5 Haitians as water technicians.  These technicians are local people that help educate the community on how to use and maintain the water systems after they are installed.  Supporting the water program yields  benefits beyond healthy water including providing jobs for the technicians and better health for all. 

Gang violence in Port au Prince, continues to displace people in Haiti, forcing many to move into the countryside to seek shelter and assistance. Fr. Claude says Bouzy has seen an influx of families to their community. They bring very little with them, and come to him asking for food or assistance, and want to send their children to school. We recently sent extra funds in response to the additional burdens on the parish. Fr. Claude used these funds to purchase food staples including rice, ground corn, beans, spaghetti, and oil, which they portioned into bags to distribute to those in need. He sent us photos of the food distribution at the parish. Fr. Claude expressed their gratitude  saying “Thanks be to God for your 15 years of support, for your understanding and response to our needs, and for your prayers.”

Why our Haiti Ministry is important for our Parish?

The reason for our partnership goes beyond responding to their lack of basic needs. We go to
share God’s love and build friendships. This relationship also creates an opportunity to see poverty through someone else’s eyes.

One of the things that we try to understand is why is poverty so hard to overcome? Haiti has experienced many corrupt dictators, political turmoil and disastrous outside interventions throughout their history. This has led to systems that are unfair to most Haitians and the root cause of corruption and poverty. The tragic gang violence we now see in Haiti is a response to poverty. The country has installed a new transitional government and is working toward free and fair elections in the future. Fr. Claude asks us to pray for an end to the violence and a just new government.

Reflecting on the relationship over 15 years, we can better understand their culture, and we have experienced their joy and felt their suffering. Our Haiti mission changes us, so that we can see more clearly and work together for a better world.

It’s been 15 years since we established a relationship with our sister parish St Catherine’s in Bouzy Haiti. Over the next few months we will be celebrating our 15th anniversary by sharing with you the many blessings we’ve received, and how through this relationship we have strengthened  our faith and brought hope and joy to both St Catherine’s and St Joseph the Worker community. As part of this celebration you will hear from fellow parishioners and our friends in Haiti.  You will learn why this relationship is so important and how it has grown over the 15 years. We will conclude this anniversary celebration with a special social hour the weekend of Nov 23-24 which is the Feast of St Catherine’s of Alexandria.

Haiti opened a new political chapter with the installation of a transitional council tasked to prepare for eventual presidential elections. The newly installed council chose Fritz Bélizaire as Haiti’s new prime minister on Tuesday April 30th as part of its monumental task of trying to establish a stable new government. The council also seeks to end the gang violence that continues in Port-au-Prince after the installation. More than 90,000 people have fled the capital looking for safety in other communities, and more than 360,000 people have been left homeless in recent years as gunmen raze communities in rival territories. 

The transitional council will work to gain international support to help them as they lead the country to peace, economic recovery and social stability. They will also function as the country’s presidency until it can arrange an election some time before it disbands, which must be by February 2026.
Please pray for their new leaders and continue to pray for our dear friends in Haiti.

Friends of Haiti,

This year continues to bring challenges to our brothers and sisters in Bouzy. The lack of a government and gangs controlling the Capital, roads, and ports have made getting supplies and food more difficult and caused prices to double.

Even with the inability to travel to Haiti for several years we have been able to regularly send funds to: support the schools, the clean water program, and obtain medications thru our trusted friends there. We are also planning to continue to work with them to complete the church so they can begin to use it for worship soon.

Your prayers and support have been vital to keep all our programs going. Our spring Haiti 2nd collection is this weekend. Anything you can contribute is important. They count on our help and prayers. You can give to Haiti thru the SJTW website or by cash or check in the collection baskets with Haiti in the memo line. 
 

Easter Greeting from Fr. Claude
Happy Easter and greet for us all our brothers and sisters of Saint Joseph. Tell them we love them.
We had a very beautiful Holy Week. First the Kindergarten children had an Easter party.
During the final three days, we organized a retreat followed by mass for the faithful and without forgetting confession. On Thursday, as always, we had the foot washing mass. This year we chose boys from the chapels of Langlois and Pochette and from Bouzy. Both on Good Friday and Saturday evening we had a large gathering. On Sunday we had the Mass of the Resurrection of Christ. 
We took time to not only pray for the healing of Mgr. Dumas (their Bishop who was severely burned in an explosion), for the blessing of the faithful of Saint Joseph the Worker, and for peace and serenity to reign in Haiti. Thank you for praying for us. We are counting on your prayers.                
Fr. Claude Telemaque