CNS STORY: Haiti earthquake suffering resonates with twinned U.S. parishes

HAITI-TWINNING Feb-4-2010 (680 words) With photo posted Jan. 27. xxxn

Haiti earthquake suffering resonates with twinned U.S. parishes

By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) --- The pain suffered by Haitian Catholics from the Jan. 12 earthquake resonates with the members of hundreds of U.S. churches that have twinning or sister-parish relationships with Haitian parishes.

Parishes that have raised money and donated supplies to their sister communities in Haiti are scrambling to raise more cash and figure out what goods are needed most after the quake.

They also mourn the loss of life, estimated Feb. 4 by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive to have reached 200,000.

Beaudain Parish in Port-aux-Pais, Haiti, suffered relatively little in the quake, according to Sister Mary Ellen Gondeck, liaison to the Haitian parish for the St. Ignatius of Antioch Catholic Community in Detroit.

Because Port-aux-Pais is in the northwest section of Haiti, it did not suffer physically, according to Sister Mary Ellen, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph.

But that does not mean the parish was untouched. "There were members of the parish who were in Port-au-Prince (the capital, 10 miles from the quake's epicenter) at the time of the earthquake and they're missing," Sister Mary Ellen said. "There was also a seminary in Port-au-Prince with 37 seminarians and two of them were from Beaudain, and they were also missing."

"Many of us want to jump on a plane and go right now," said Karen Martens, a registered nurse and leader of the Haiti team for St. Stephen Parish in Old Hickory, Tenn., in the Diocese of Nashville. Martens and her team had planned to leave Nashville for Petit-Goave, Haiti, Jan. 16, but decided that it would be better to postpone the trip for a month or two rather than hop on the first rescheduled flight.

"Our relationship with the parish of Notre Dame in Petite-Goave is long. We've been twinned for over 30 years and that bond has not been broken. We will proceed with the trip when the time is right," St. Stephen pastor Father Pat Kibby wrote in a message to parishioners after the quake. "We will still be there when everyone has walked away."

St. Stephen planned to send its medical supplies to Haiti with a Haitian doctor from Meharry Medical Center who was scheduled to join their mission trip to Petit-Goave. "I'm just glad the meds can go and save lives," Martens told the Tennessee Register, Nashville's diocesan newspaper.

The main church in Petit-Goave was destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake, as were the city hall and library, all central to life in the Haitian countryside, Martens said. A major aftershock struck near the town Jan. 20, and St. Stephen parishioners were waiting to hear from contacts in Petit Goave about further damage.

"I was in Haiti the Saturday before the earthquake," Dr. Tom Fame told Catholic News Service in a Feb. 3 telephone interview from Salem, Va. "Good timing, I guess, on my part."

The worst part, Fame suggested, is not knowing.

"When people finish primary school, they go on to secondary school," traveling to Port-au-Prince to live in dormitories while they continue their education, Fame said. "The secondary school was in progress when the earthquake hit. A lot of those kids have not come back. Where are they now? Under a pile of rubble? Helping out? I don't know. It's still hard to communicate. I still can't call in to Haiti."

Fame has helped out in Haiti since 1996. He established a trust fund to help pay for the construction of three schools, a kitchen and dormitories, solar panels and teacher salaries.

His parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Salem, has contributed $30,000 a year on average since 2002 for a lunch program for schools attached to Sacre Coeur Parish in Cabestor, Haiti. At Sacre Coeur, Fame said, "there was a lot of shaking but not much breaking" from the temblor.

Although he couldn't call in to Haiti, the Sacre Coeur pastor was able to call out to him. "My Creole's pretty good, but it's hard to understand when they're speaking fast," Fame said. "The gist was 'send money.'"

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Contributing to this story were Theresa Laurence and Andy Telli in Nashville.

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