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Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage
Since 1999, St Luke's has supported the orphanage in Haiti founded by Fr Rick Frechette, Passionist priest and doctor. Since 1987 the orphanage has cared for thousands of children through the years. Fr Rick has also built the only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, St Damien's.
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Dear family and friends,
While quietly crossing the threshold from a most difficult year into a (hopefully) better year, I lit a simple fire in an old tire rim,
and with Orion twinkling in the darkness above, I contemplated the religious icon that accompanies these words.
Mary and Joseph are exhausted, thick shadows haunt their soulful eyes which are apprehensive with sadness and worry.
They lean into one other, as if each would fall over without the other.
The child Jesus is placed in between them, like the ballast keeping them upright.
His face reveals that he is absorbing the trouble in the hearts of his mother and father.
Yet a golden light surrounds his countenance, as he looks directly at you, at me.
The greek letters in the golden glow reveal his name: "I AM" (Exodus 3:14).
Big credentials for a small, troubled boy.
He is speaking to us with the gesture of his right hand,
a "hand speak" as precise in icons, as it is in signing with the deaf.
This is an exhausted refugee family, having gone overnight from being visited by Kings, to running for their lives.
We know too well the bloody reasons for their exile.
Two thousand years have past, and still today thus is life for far too many families.
Whole families, throughout the world.
Their faces blend into the same sorrowful, but blessed, togetherness of this icon:
Families of Haitians in the jungles of the Darien gap,
families of Syrians in Turkey,
of Afghans in Pakistan
of Sudanese in Congo,
families who perish altogether in the Mediterranean Sea.
These anguished families number 82 million people today, as we live and breathe and begin a new year.
Most of these refugees are women and children, fleeing violence and death in their homelands.
Pope Francis referred to their plight in his Christmas message, as a massive and forgotten human tragedy.
"These nightmares never seem to end, and by now we hardly even notice them.
We have become so used to them, that immense tragedies are being passed over in silence." (Urbi et Orbi, Christmas 2021)
There are also other kinds of refugees: their lives are marked by "The flight into virtual."
The flight of many people from their own humanity, from deep human bonds, has become for us a plague.
Alarms are sounding about the mental health of children and young adults, because of lives spent virtually streaming or gaming.
Much concerned attention is now paid to the tragic "devolution" of the human being.
People are losing the art of how to befriend and mature in friendship, how to define yourself with healthy boundaries and respect the boundaries of others, how to both compete with rivals and challenge opponents in a healthy way.
We see the consequences.
Often, the flight into virtual is the flight into emptiness, and then the flight into big trouble, as you try to deal with the emptiness.
Pornography, gambling, dark chat groups, movements against the values and principles that make us able to live in a civil and civilized way,
sites that enable, rather than challenge, tendencies to baseness, racism, and falsehood.
If the emptiness gets to you, and you are thinking of suicide, the dark side of the web will encourage you to just "go ahead," and even offer suggestions to help you end your life.
In relation to truth, and its liberating discovery and unfolding, we rather live in a time of gaslighting, of smoke and mirrors, of fierceness in encounters, of intense division and hatred.
The tragic flight is from humanity itself.
Yet, as we flee from our very humanity, we celebrate at Christmastide the awesome wonder that God entered into it gladly,
in order to awaken within us all the best angels of our human nature.
This is a hopeful cause for joy, especially as we begin a new year of intense challenges.
Humanity in Haiti is also at a very low ebb, as many of you know from following the news.
A lot of our time now is spent trying helping relocate internal refugees from city wide violence (especially in Martissant),
trying to help kidnapped people get freed unharmed (at present, two Catholic seminarians),
trying to help the homeless rebuild their lives (the earthquake in the south was only five months ago),
trying to help bind the wounds of victims of armed bandits (a Catholic priest was shot yesterday in Miragoane)
trying to grieve and help bury those who did not survive armed assaults (on Saturday, we will bury Marco, who grew up in our NPH homes
and worked as a "blood runner," getting blood from the Red Cross for our hospitalized patients.)
And, of course, trying to keep our normal work going.
The Pope is right. We are too used to the atrocities. The overriding reaction is silence.
Bishop Dumas wrote a strong condemnation, lament, and call to action on the shooting of Fr Francois, as has been done many times by the Bishops of Haiti.
The usual response is the sound of crickets.
As the saying goes, "it is what it is."
But people of good will, and people of faith, cannot stop there.
"It is what we are allowing it be."
And we need to work hard to change it.
With many of you, we will fight with all our ability to change what should not be,
what should never, ever have become "what it is."
This year in Haiti, people on the street don't say "have a good year" (Bon ané).
instead they say "have a good battle" (Bon kombat).
Everyone here squarely knows what they are up against.
These phrase "Bon Kombat" echos the words of St Paul:
"I have fought the good fight, I have run to good race," (2 Timothy 4:7)
The good fight will not leave you looking (or walking) like you did in your prime.
The good race will guarantee your intimate knowledge of the loneliness of the long distance runner.
But St Paul finishes by saying, "I have kept the faith."
This is a great New Year's resolution, wish and prayer:
May we keep the faith
in our humanity,
in ourselves,
in each other,
in what we can create together,
and in God.
Blessings of peace, strength, courage and wisdom for you and your families, in a new year of challenges.
Thank you for your generous and precious help over many years,
Fr Richard Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince Haiti
January 6, 2022 -
Letter from Fr. Rick
Dear friends and family,
Recently I happened to come across the question as to whether it is possible to care too much.
I had never thought about it.
We can often ask ourselves if we care enough, but not if we care too much.
We may not care enough about helping to solve a major problem, if we fear our suggestion might be flatly rejected or ridiculed.
We might not care enough to say, "I love you," if we are afraid of being snubbed, rejected or hurt.
We might not care enough to say, "he did it," when we try to address a terrible wrong but are afraid of retaliation.
Even less do we care enough to say, "I did it," when we would prefer not to feel ashamed.
We might not care enough to run into a fire to save a child, if we are afraid of being burned.
I may not care enough to hear the opinion of someone else, out of fear that it might change my opinion, and cause the disorientation and confusion that are normal in the evolution of understanding.
The limits to our caring are in direct proportion to our risks of being hurt, one way or another.
We may avoid bees for fear of being stung.
But then we will never know sweet, golden honey.
We may avoid thorns for their painful pricks,
but then we will never know the beauty of the pristine rose.
In Christian teaching, Jesus praises the widow whose contribution to the poor jeopardized her financial security.
Jesus praises the one who will lay down their life to save another.
Jesus obliges that our care reach into the lives and hearts of even our enemies.
According to this teaching, it's pretty hard to care too much.
With the many problems we are facing in our world, what is required of each of us is the courage to change, to encounter each challenge and each other without fierceness, but rather with inner peace.
We must live out the solutions to our many problems by caring more, and not less- and certainly avoiding not caring at all.
To deeply care about everything that is happening, and to risk the wounds that getting involved often cause, is the only way to build the best future together.
We need a fresh start at absolutely everything.
Christians around the world are just now beginning a new year of grace.
As an alternative to marking a year's passing by well-defined days and months, the Christian calendar marks the passing of the year by mysteries, the reliving of the major revelations of grace.
Seen through this prism, the Year of Grace 2022 will start this evening at sunset.
Central to the mystery is that the year of grace starts in darkness.
At the vigil mass, a solitary advent candle will be lit against all darkness,
as a pledge of growing light, and the coming of the True Light.
The quiet darkness of a Church is one thing,
but the fierce darkness of evil is quite something else.
Yet they are both very dark.
When either darkness settles thick upon us and around us, the darkness robs us of all colors and forms, within and without.
There is confusion, and the terror of chaos.
We can rightly have the impression that both darkness and evil are all pervasive.
As a deliberate protest to against this chaos, a candle can be lit.
A small ray of light can be released.
A wax candle on a wreath, a word of truth spoken with kindness, or a ray of hope released in the heart.
While rescuing one of our kidnapped friends recently, and freeing her from the evil of human bondage, I shared once again the experience that too many families must suffer, when trying to free their loved ones from the hands of criminals.
After entering the territory of heavily armed bandits in order to retrieve Micheline, on a dark road in a deserted place, seeing many masked men with large weapons, I started to feel inwardly lost and powerless.
I looked at the darkness all around. Even the moral darkness is palpable.
The darkness was pervasive, and seemingly infinite, and the sky was as black as pitch because of thick clouds.
But I still could see one prominent, lone star.
I was not sure how things were going to end up for me, for Raphael, and for Micheline- but I realized I had a fundamental choice to make to keep myself centered.
I could focus on the darkness, or I could focus on the star.
This choice makes all the difference in the world.
It is not about denying the darkness.
It is about making the star central to how we understand,
and to how we intentionally orient ourselves to the powers of heaven.
Nothing is easy in the world today. What a huge challenge for young people.
So easy to get lost and to turn to harmful comforts.
Here in Haiti, you well know all the recent history.
Bandits and crime are all pervasive,
Port-au-Prince is now the kidnapping capital of the world, hunger is rampant,
the President was brutally killed, and the government has very few elected members,
there was another major earthquake three months ago,
there are thousands of internal refugees from violence,
we are in our third wave of Covid, and have been dealing with major shortages of oxygen, diesel and gasoline to keep our hospitals powered and functioning.
It can seem like on an already moonless night, deep and dark clouds roll in,
covering even the last lone star.
But when this happens, then we have the next surprise of Grace.
When you cannot see the star anymore, it will sing to you.
"Then sped my thoughts to keep
that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
and marveling could not tell
Whether it were angels
or the bright stars singing."
(Robert Bridges, Christmas Eve 1913)
Similar to this deep intuition, Jesus warns those who are trying to silence his disciples that even if they could silence them, the rocks and stones themselves would start to sing. (Luke 19:40)
With these thoughts, we are pretty much assured we can't lose when we are on the side of goodness.
At least we can't lose what is most important - what is deepest and truest about life, about ourselves.
The same Robert Bridges quoted above, a poet of deep faith, says this in a poem called The Affliction of Richard:
Though I must fear to lose,
And drown my joy in care,
With all its thorns I choose
The path of love and prayer.
What does it mean to drown your joy in care?
Brigitte is as excellent a person as she is an excellent eye surgeon. She has cared for many children we have sent to her over many years, with a terrible cancer of the eye. The name of the cancer is as terrible as the cancer itself: rhabdomyosarcoma.
The only way to save the child is to remove the eye.
Can you imagine removing a child's eye?
Brigitte told me once when she removes a child's cancerous eye, she needs two days to recover, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Brigitte obviously cares too much. Her joy drowns in the caring, in the awful removal of an eye.
But a child lives (there is a star), and still can see with the other eye (another star), and then a beautiful glass eye is made to fill the void (another star still, even if lesser)- and we are all better off for the many people around the world who, like Brigitte, accept to suffer because they care, and see their joy restored after accepting the suffering that was, in fact, saving.
In our many programs in Haiti, we are doing our best to deal with the many challenges here, as you are where you live.
But our farms have folded, our guest house forced to close, we have had to suspend burying the destitute dead, we have two teachers who lost their lives to bandits, we have lost a large number of staff who have fled to live in other countries, and fundraising is way down, even as urgency spirals to new heights.
Our main efforts at this tough time are for very vulnerable people, including refugees and earthquake victims, and keeping our institutions going.
We are helping full throttle at grass roots levels.
Every year Forbes magazine lists about 170 countries according to how easy or difficult it is for any enterprise to survive there.
Haiti always ranks as one of the most challenging countries in the world, in which to succeed in any business or enterprise.
We know this by our lived experience, and yet, we are dedicated. We have grit. We care.
Our motto is "If not me, who? If not now, when?"
Even though it seems we are starting all over again on many levels, since things have fallen so low over the past years, we are ready and willing.
St Paul assures us, where there are problems, sin and evil, the Grace of God is more abundant still. (Romans 5:20)
Thank you for continuing to believe in us, and especially in the people we serve. Your generous help has kept us going strong.
We wish you many blessings in this new liturgical year of grace.
Grace is at the threshold once again, the key to the door is to care all the more.
Let's agree to care more, not less, and to let Grace enter.
You can start tonight, by looking at the closest star.
Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince
November 27, 2021
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The Riderless Horse
Dear Family and Friends,
The year was 1963. The name of the horse was Black Jack.
Even for a 10 year old, it was both moving and troubling to see the horse with no rider following the coffin of President John Kennedy- with a spirited strut, yet not easily controlled.
The horse with the empty saddle is an ancient symbol of poignant absence:
The horse without a master, the nation without a leader, the body without a soul.
We are living the painful and dangerous days after the brutal killing of Haitian President Jovenel Moise.
The horse has no rider, and does not know where to turn.
The aftershock we were all waiting for with great anxiety, didn't happen: widespread retaliation, the breaking open of the prisons, rioting and looting, and for the gangs to take over police stations and government offices.
This is a relief, but still no one knows what will happen next.
The violence that killed the President has been the daily lived experience for all levels of Haitian citizens for many years now.
It had become, each year, more terrible and more overt.
We have picked up many of the dead for burial over these last years, including those of the La Saline massacre.
Countless wounded have been rushed to our hospital over the years.
This ugliness and pathos is also our lived experience (even though we have not yet suffered any direct attack), and drives our work and our prayers.
The reign of terror now has reached even the residence of the President, in a most hateful way.
The final anguish of the President as he died is to be pitied and abhorred, and the brutality totally condemned.
But equally so, the death of the countless victims, anonymous or well known, over these years, should also call for worldwide rage, and not fall into the shadows (as they have here, until now).
Even though there has been no widespread violent reaction to the death of President Moise, the usual list of problems persists:
the newest COVID wave,
thousands of internal refugees from gang attacks on their neighborhoods,
flight from the country,
hunger and food insecurity,
a disastrous economy, joblessness and mounting levels of frustration,
the advance of the gangs taking over the country,
the ineffectiveness of the Government.
Related to the advance of the gangs, the infamous 400 Marozo (who recently made international news by kidnapping 10 priests, nuns and Church members), now have our area of Tabarre surrounded.
They have taken over Croix des Bouquets and Torcelle.
Some of their "soldiers" are 11 years old, with guns as big as they are.
To give an idea of the insecurity, yesterday our team and I crossed the dreaded stretch of road through Martissant, to go to Carrefour.
Here are the visuals: full of mud and garbage, the road broken and sunken, with bullet ridden buildings to the right and left, empty streets, gunmen in the shadows,
shells of burned vehicles on the road, a rotting headless corpse.
All of this is the total opposite of the well being and dignity all people strive for, the total opposite of the dream of God for humankind: life, life fully, life always.
It is barbarism. It is hell.
Anyone in Haiti will cringe at this name- Martissant.
We crossed to take some elderly Sisters who had been under our care for COVID, home to their convent at Riviere Froide.
Of the four Sisters who came two us from this convent, two died within hours. But these Sisters thankfully recovered.
I was also going there to retrieve another Sister who fell and badly broke her arm two days earlier, for orthopedic care back at our hospital in Tabarre.
Life has to go on. Goodness has to proceed, un-coweringly, before evil.
And you can believe me that goodness is lived out here ever day, in most heroic ways, by the vast majority of the Haitian people.
I wish that were headline news.
Someone asked me why it was, since Haitians around the world have been so successful and have make remarkable contributions in the countries where they have settled,
why they can't do the same in Haiti.
The answer is simple. There are no level playing fields in Haiti. All opportunities are conditional, and the conditions are often illegal, degrading and dangerous.
Political leaders have unbridled influence, and this influence is most often self serving.
In better functioning democracies where Haitians have settled, and which have accountability and punishment built into the national laws and codes, leaders are not (at least for long) unbridled.
With hard work and sacrifice, even after some battle scars because of racism, sexual discrimination or abuse, abuse of power, and other social plagues, people can evolve and advance.
Both the Ten Commandments and the Federalist Papers, the former being the blueprint for Judeo-Christian civilization and the latter being the blueprint for American Democracy, have as a premise the danger of the unbridled human will.
This realistic pessimism of human nature allows the architects of the body-politic to set up the sociopolitical scaffolding to contain it.
Here is a better way to phrase it:
"The most identifying trait about our humanity, is our ability to be inhumane."
We can start out with good will, and then we degenerate, and rot in the heart and soul:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
Those who have become soul sick, and then violent and barbaric, showing no evidence of even a trace of mercy, are often called in Kreol "po moun".
They have the skin of human form, but nothing else is human about them.
Jesus used similar words, and very harshly, on how the whitewashed appearance of Pharisees covered an internal rotting graveyard.
We come now to an essential point.
What is it that makes a pessimistic view of a person's will both necessary and practical?
It's because the soul, the very center of humanity, dignity, and communion with God, can be diminished, destroyed, or take its leave.
The Holy Writings of many religious traditions confirm this.
There is no guarantee of ongoing soulfulness. Neither yours nor mine.
The soul has to be cultivated, it thrives under certain ways of living, and suffocates under others.
We know how the soul comes to us: Michelangelo best imaged it, as the touch of the fingers, God's to Adam's.
We know how the soul is spirited and strengthened, as seen in the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, or in the apocalyptic visions of St John.
But do you when know when the soul take its leave, and leaves us to our animal instincts? - or even worse, to demonic influences where behavior is Satanically cruel and hateful?
At what point to we become a horse without a rider?
Maybe this is something we all need to get good at, and really fast.
The waning of its powers and the sickness of the soul, calls for so very much attention in our modern world, and the spiritual skills to address it.
It starts with how you, or I, choose to think and act, in the face of what is really, really bad.
Do we continually choose life over death, as God instructed. Do we act out of sacrifice, goodness and reconciliation, in spite of our fears, in the face of what is really, really bad.
Only you can answer for you, only I can answer for me, but we both can encourage the young and the lost to do the same.
I have noticed over the years in dealing with gangs, that for every hundred members, about ninety are just following the only leader in town, and doing so out of need.
But they would rather, if they could, live a clean way, and be a pride and not a disgrace to their mothers and families. Given another practical way to live, and a leader who leads them to their good and not to their bad,
they will follow.
Of the remaining ten, eight are fence sitters. They can be swayed toward good or toward bad, or back and forth, depending on many things, including their alcohol or drug levels.
You might lose some, you might win some, but it will take a lot of patience, skill and work.
The remaining two will be "po moun".
"Desalmados."
No light in their eyes to hook on to, with your penetrating gaze of healing.
They are gone.
But you just made them lonely, too. They now have no one to follow them.
In this time of notorious fake news, I was amazed to find a fake letter from Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda,
written to the youth of Haiti.
Imagine, fake news with a great message.
Learning from the disastrous genocide and civil war of his own country and against his own race, and wanting to avoid the Somalianization of Haiti, he tries to help young people see that they are quite expendable pawns, in the hands of the brokers of the big business of hatred.
Yes, hatred is enormously profitable. Just starting with guns, and even more, bullets.
The "po moun" leaders of this huge business of hatred need the frustrations and hunger of the 11 year old soldier, to crank up their profits.
In this letter of fake origin but true message, the author uses powerful real life examples to try to help the young seek peace, feel inner worth, and refuse to be the executioners for the haters.
Let us choose good and right, all the time, with courage. Not fearless (that's impossible and imprudent), but also not paralyzed by fear.
To choose to do good today is food for the soul, and strengthening of it.
We lament when a person seems heartless, when a community seems to have lost its soul and "gone totally corporate", or even worse, then it seems the soul of a nation is receding.
But we can hold soul-ground. Just by staying good people. It's that simple, and that hard.
Let us pray for the family of President Moise, and for all the Haitian people who have had to drink from the most bitter cup of violence.
Let us be confident that people of good will (and they are many) will be blessed by God in all efforts toward national reconciliation and a future of peace.
Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince
July 16, 2021 -
Dear friends,
It is worth for a moment to think about the meaning of breath.
From the Judeo-Christian belief, a human person is clay formed by God's hand, and brought to life by God's breath.
Breath so strongly represents spirit and soul, that when someone breaths their last, it is often referred to as giving up the spirit.
At Pentecost, through the the descent of the strong breath of the Holy Spirit upon them, and later by the Risen Jesus breathing over them, that the power of God is shared with believers, fuel for the great work given to each of us to do: to rise far above what we could ever be on our own, and to also raise up our families, our nations, our world to the noblest kind of living.
By now, around the world, we are all very used to the dreadful coronavirus that attacks breath, and leaves in its wake wide trails of suffocation and death.
Jesus saw sickness as evil because it threatens or destroys life.
It has been easy for all of us caring for the COVID sick, to see how cruel and crushing of life is this pandemic.
In Christianity, breath is the life force, and the Truth of God is what we breathe.
The work of God is life and truth.
But truth without heart is cruel, and we all know what is like to have truth "held against us".
To the total contrary, when truth is wielded with mercy and compassion, truth "sets us free".
The scriptures say, when kindness and truth meet, justice and peace embrace.
In Haiti, for the second time in a year, we are struggling against this fierce breathlessness.
A year ago we received some 1,500 people over three months, and now, just over the past 5 weeks, we have already received 518 people confirmed or suspected with COVID.
We do not yet see a plateau.
Those dead on arrival are not a few, and those who died in our care are not a few.
We can evaluate our averages when all is said and done, and qualified.
The averages are useful statistics that help us evaluate what happened and how effective we were in the face of pandemic, in order to improve.
But of course, those who are sick, or die, are all our brothers and sisters and not digits, and we are all the poorer for their loss.
In this message, we do not speak of the general experience in Haiti, only of our own St Luke COVID center.
The illness includes the young and old, it includes priests and nuns and brothers, doctors and nurses and public servants, and aunts and fathers, mothers and best friends.
Many of these are now hallowing the cemetery with the bodies that mark their heroic life stories, like parchment with the final etchings.
But most of our afflicted friends get up again, and happily head home.
This makes us happy, too.
One year after the initial onset of COVID, the world has created vaccines, but they are not here in Haiti.
The world has created antivirals, but they are not here in Haiti. The world has created monoclonal antibodies, but they are not here in Haiti.
Maybe they are here in some small quantity for the lucky or privileged.
We have for this new wave of COVID what we had last year-
things like dexamethasone and heparin, azithromycin and ceftriaxone,
the important vitamins, and medicines for symptoms and for co-morbid conditions.
But we have much less this year of what we had in abundance last year-
the most essential medicine, which is oxygen.
We do not enjoy the free (sponsored) oxygen of last year, and so we are paying cash for oxygen.
This is quite limiting.
We are averaging 90 beds, 80 of whom need oxygen by tank as opposed to small bedside concentrator, and each person needs on average 4 tanks per day at $19/refill.
You can do the math to understand our stress.
Even worse, the insecurity in the country interferes with oxygen being imported as liquid, then being converted to gas at the factory, and then being delivered.
It is hard and dangerous work to refill 320 tanks per day, in the red zones of Port au Prince.
We have a long list of our own nightmares related to this, as recently as today.
Red is, in fact, the dominating color throughout Port au Prince.
The sick cannot breath, and ironically we are also holding our own breaths very often, wondering if the day will come when we will be deprived of oxygen altogether, and the fear we may face many tragic deaths because of the lack of oxygen, and this within hours.
It almost happened a few times already, because of the violence on the streets, most memorably on the feast of Corpus Christi, - a story too long a story to tell here.
Yet, we have been and continue to be blessed and strengthened.
We have been strengthened with Haitian Government donations of a massive generator and an oxygen producing system (making 50 of our needed 320 tanks per day).
These combined are valued at US $250,000.
We have had many local cash donations nearing $200,000, and many local donations of clorox, protective equipment, sheets, soaps and shampoos,
It is amazing and wonderful.
From friends old and new abroad, we have been blessed with donations and pledges of an additional $700,000 from multiple sources.
We are at about 75% of our projected budget for three to four months of this new COVID wave.
The lion's share of this budget is for breath. It is for oxygen.
We are also involved in good dialogues to try to get vaccines, antivirals, and even monoclonal antibodies to be part of our arsenal against COVID and for restored health.
All to be shared with other centers, as possible, in alignment with the Ministry of Health and other colleagues in this battle.
We are also involved in important dialogues to help us achieve more ability to produce oxygen onsite - our goal is at least 200 tanks/day of our own production.
Thank you so much for your generous help.
Please help us reach our budgeted goal, to get us through this new wave and beyond.
Thank you also for your well wishes and prayers. They are powerful.
From wherever you read this message, and catch up in a small way on our daily work, may you be peaceful and healthy and greatly blessed by God.
Fr Richard Frechette CP, DO
Port au Prince
June 18, 2021Copyright © 2021 Fr. Rick, All rights reserved. -
Haiti: The Need is Great
Fr. Rick Frechette and the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti ask for your prayers and support.
See their Amazon Wish List for needed items, below.
Since 1999 St. Luke's Parish, under the guidance, love, and compassion of Gloria Josephs aka The Haiti Lady, has supported Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage in Haiti. Founded by Father Rick Frechette, Passionist priest and doctor, the orphanage has cared for tens of thousands of children through the years. Fr. Rick also built the only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, St. Damien Pediatric Hospital, a 224-bed pediatric hospital which provides services to over 80,000 patients each year.
Fr. Rick Frechette in the Chapel at St. Damien Pediatric Hospital.
Fr. Rick also founded the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti which creates dignified jobs in social service fields; delivers water to slums, hospitals, and clinics; and buries unclaimed dead from the city morgue.
With COVID cases spiking alarmingly in Haiti, and access to critical supplies thwarted due to crime and corruption, Fr. Rick and the St. Luke Foundation are reaching out for help. Please consider supporting this important ministry.
Team members in Scranton, PA have arranged to send an emergency shipment to Haiti within the next ten days. They have put together a wish list on Amazon of items needed most which we can purchase for them.
How You Can Help:- Amazon...: Purchase items and send to St. Luke Foundation (address in PA)
Click here: St. Luke Foundation for Haiti Wish List
- Donation...: If you prefer to make a financial gift to support these efforts
Click here: St. Luke Haiti
Dear Friends,
As you may have read from the recent email from Father Rick (here), the COVID cases are spiking in Haiti. To make matters worse, we are having difficulty obtaining the items necessary to treat our COVID patients because of the increasing gang violence and kidnappings.
So many of you have generously reached out and asked how to help! Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so very much for your consideration, your kind words, and your prayers!
May God Bless You,
St. Luke Foundation Team
Care teams at St. Damien Hospital
The St. Luke Foundation for Haiti is a 100% Haitian-run non-profit organization, providing education, medical care and dignified humanitarian outreach in places that have been under-served by traditional service providers. We believe that by following a shared vision for the future, we can walk hand-in-hand towards a more prosperous and independent Haiti.
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Dear family and friends,
Even though the sun was shining brightly,
there were the thick, dark, invisible clouds of evil overhead,
mocking both the light of day, and the light of God.
This was true both for him and for HIM.
There were expressed threats to kill both HIM and him, uttered in public and private places.
Bad words can pierce ones body worse than a bullet, which at least finishes you off in a matter of minutes.
The words of hate linger in the mind and heart,
they brood and multiply, spreading like cancer,
and they twist joys into anxieties and confidence into dread.
For HIM the words caused no less than the sweating of blood.
For him, the words caused both fear and a furor.
As for the onlookers, they had lived with killings and threats for so long, that one more violent death could not possibly interfere with finishing the rest of the sandwich in their hands, or with delivering the punchline of a joke they were in the middle of telling.
The onlookers had seen many crucifixions on the hill, they were all the same.
They had seen many gunshot dead in the streets, they were all the same.
Been there, done that. Next.
But this is not true for little onlookers, children for whom violence sets their gaze, and their hearts, rigid.
How can we soften them?
It was the hour of first vespers, Palm Sunday 2021.
I was at his funeral, and preparing for HIS week of Holy Memory.
For HIM, the hammer set to the nail was an announcement. Those closest would hear it.
Some would shiver- would you have shivered?
For him, the announcement was a thunderous crack, when the small metal lever struck the bullet. I was near enough to hear it, but I couldn't.
I was lifting a box of medicines, in front of a large, screeching fan.
But as chickens scatter at any blow, some towards and some away,
and since our eyes are more finely tuned to movement than to acuity,
the sight of the our staff running in all directions dropped my heart to my feet.
And I ran, heart-footed, toward, and not away.
For HIM, a lance in the side was the grand finale, the outflow of the remaining life blood.
For him, the side was torn open wide by a ballistic mini spear..
"We need to cover him. GET A SHEET!"
The children on the street would then see a red spotted cloth, rather than his empty eyes and generous entrails.
Long ago, there was nothing to cover HIM, high on the cross.
Two of us preach.
Fr Fitho speaks first, and my eyes wander.
Not for lack of interest is his moving exhortation away from revenge and toward placing confidence in God's justice,
but because it was impossible not to lock my eyes on the faces of his four small children in their grief, of his wife on the floor,
of his white haired mother lamenting in heart wrenching rythm.
My turn to preach came.
Full heart, useless tongue.
For him there were two priests, each a one-time preach.
For HIM, preachers have spanned twenty centuries and counting.
My words came out as they wished, my eyes spoke more to the eyes of others, well known to me,
whose presence at the funeral prayers was a tortured reliving of that day, many of few years ago,
when they lost their mother or father, daughter or brother, in this dreadful, public way.
Pie, Jesu.
My eyes locked with all of these eyes, looking for viridans (greenness) deep within- know from ancient times as the very first vital sign.
It is there, but dimly lit.
"Lead kindly light amid encircling doom, lead though me on."
For HIM, there were few eyes to look into.
Most were not there to pay any respects, but to be amused.
I they had iphones they would have filmed and posted, with smiling selfies.
Others there were functionaries.
Like the doorkeeper in NY who recently closed the door on the elderly woman being beaten at the very portal, for being a foreigner.
But present there for HIM, most beautifully and meaningfully, were three Marys and a John.
They radiated viridans through the deepest sorrow and grief, as HIS viridans receded.
Yes, I do see it in their eyes. Alleluia! Strange how I can be happy for a minute, at such a time.
I sent for them today and met them in Tabarre, in the name of HIM who, Isaiah promised, "will not quench a dimly lit flame."
We will become friends. I renewed our sincere condolences and share pain, shared some home made chocolates, promised help with schooling.
After a while, they went home with some Easter tilapia from our ponds, and some cash for help over the holidays/
When we start by protecting the failing flame in each other through friendship, we prepare the way for God to do a great work.
Lightening the load, enlightening the heart, and helping light the way is holy and luminous work.
About HIM, there was a motive-minded posting on the Cross
"The King of the Jews"
When this was challenged, Pilate retorted
"Quod scripsi, scripsi."
About him, there was a motive-minded posting on facebook by his killer
"Old men don't strike old men"
which was challenged with
"Old men dont kill old men!"
answered with silence.
(But in fact, neither are old.)
Ironically, at this point of writing this reflection, I just ran out and delivered a baby in the hallway, having heard the screams.
Enter, stage right, a new baby overflowing with viridans, and lungs full of the cry of life. It's an early Easter gift.
Joseph and Nicodemus took down HIS body, bathed and anointed it with wonderful oils,
to prepared it for burial.
Another Fitho and I lifted his body, and sutured his ragged wounds back together.
As I held his hand away from his own wound as pushed and sutured, it was still warm in mine.
Viridans departs slowly, but finally.
HIS was Calvary.
So was his.
And so has Calvary marked ours lives in the strongest of ways, from COVID, cancers, car wrecks and chaos.
The crowding of Calvary is the mark of our recent years.
On Calvary, we are in blessed company.
And the looking into the eyes has been through tablets and phone screens, on facetime and zoom.
We have been impoverished by the necessity of standing by the cross virtually, and being there by proxy.
Such has been the lonely and necessary isolation.
But virtual light is better than none.
And we have much more to our stories than virtual light.
This verse is from the 10th verse of the 700 year-old Good Friday Hymn, "Stabat Mater":
Make me feel as thou hast felt
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.
The multitudes of dimly lit lights on the Calvarys of today,
joined with HIS great light, outshine any supernova of stars.
Our hope and our joy is this:
"The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it."
May the Light of Jesus strengthen the God-light in your heart, and may we recommit to the continual enlightenment of each other, in HIS name.
Happy Easter and wishes for all the blessings and graces of this Holy Season, for you and your families!
Fr Richard Frechette
March 31, 2021
Port au Prince
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Lenten Message from Fr. Rick
Dear Friends,I am at a loss for words right now about how difficult things are for the Haitian people, and of course for the world in general.
Just like you, we keep working hard, our faith is in overdrive, and we are confident in God's promise that we will be rewarded with fruit that will last.
I am sure you agree that It's a great mix- our feeble efforts, and God's great blessing on them!
I am very pleased to share with you the 2020 report of our ongoing work in Haiti.
Let's appreciate the part each has played to fill the year, if it were a glass, at least half full of water.
The file is big to send any other way, but you can see by clicking on this link.
I share with those who might be interested some of my own reflections on the liturgical readings for Lent.
You can find them on here:First Week https://youtu.be/vGIPHxNuZG8
Second Week https://youtu.be/HBIMOdav4nU
Third Week https://youtu.be/nVlgs7yGOxo
You will find the two to come, on stlukehaiti.org.
During lent we recall God's ancient remedy for spiritual illness: prayers, self denial and good works for the poor. Let's take the medicine gladly.
Thanks for what you do in your daily lives, to help those who are in in trouble or heavily burdened.
With gratitude and prayers,
Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince
March 6, 2021