Six months have gone by since the earthquake, and easily our work is three times larger than it was before. We have so many new programs to meet the pressing needs. Today for the first time, we fired up our crematorium. Although I was joking that I would like to use it to make Sister Judy’s birthday cake (for her 65^th today), the sad truth is that poverty still humiliates the poor even after their death (a simple trip to the general morgue would show that to be true in a second). Our first attempt at a more dignified  burial through cremation was predictably for a child, for five year old Lori Demosthene. We said the usual prayers for the dead, and commended Lori to God, to ash, and to the earth. This is our reality. The circle of life, coming around all too soon, completed already in childhood. Our crematorium is dedicated to Our Mother of Sorrows. We have the sorrow of burying more than 50 children and 30 adults every week.  

Our new campground for displaced children is nearly ready. We have been working there all week. Instead of circling the wagons, we squared off empty containers in a huge rectangle covering 4,000 square meters. We will expand it in time. The containers themselves will soon be dormitories for the children, and the area for meals, schooling and activities will be in the shadow of the containers with the help of large awnings. There are about 350 children waiting to come in. There will be an area for small children dedicated to St Ann, the grandmother of Jesus, and a section for older children dedicated to St Louis. We hope to open July 27, on the feast of St Ann. In the meantime, the program for kids in tent cities, called Fr Wasson’s angels of light, is going strong and fast becoming an informal school system and nutrition center for 3000 children.  

We have started another eight street schools over these six months. One of them is for blind and deaf children. The school they used to attend, St Vincent’s in Port au Prince, was destroyed by the earthquake, so we made a simple school for them until St Vincent is rebuilt. Our first ten children are already in this simple school.We named the school for the late beloved founder of St Vincent’s, Sister Joan Margaret. Our other 23 schools are all in session, some in tents and some in undamaged buildings, and all of them will be rebuilt slowly. We have a campaign in progress for this.  

The program for prosthetic s and rehabilitation called St Germaine  is well underway, and many people leave our gates with crutches, wheelchairs and artificial limbs  just a little bit stronger and a little bit more able after every therapy visit. The mothers are so beautiful and patient with their children, but sadly sometimes the mothers also are disabled or missing a limb from the earthquake. Hope springs eternal.    

Our St Luke field hospital for adults and children has saved a few lives already. It looks like something from Gilligans Island but it works for now. We are making a prefab surgery room at the moment, and doing our best to make it a family environment. We have a portable CT Scan already, and a portable Digital XRAY in the planning, most important since we receive terrible trauma injuries.  Our ability will be greatly increased by this equipment which will be used in an air conditioned container! Just today, we received the donation of an ambulance for the field hospital, from the government of Spain.  

On July 23, our original orphanage (as of 23 years)  we will receive 40 children from the earthquake. It will bring the population there at St Helene to 400 children.  

We are still very busy with distributions of food, clothing, water, tents, and thousands of shoes donated in memory of Molly Hightower, one of our deeply mourned volunteers killed when our headquarters  at Petionville collapsed. The distributions are difficult but important, since Port au Prince hardly at all much improved from the original catastrophe six months ago. I think many of you saw the pictures of the memorial we made for our deceased children, staff, volunteers and colleagues from the earthquake. It is at St Damien Hospital. It is our new cornerstone.  

At St Damien hospital, our cancer program is improving, the surgery center is very active, the new maternity and neonatology programs and struggling but doing well, and we now can do digital electroencephalograms and have them interpreted abroad. This is to monitor the seizure activity of our patients. It is a huge advance in our treatment of seizures. Also, just today, little Anabel returned to Italy to have part of her skull replaced, finally, after losing it in the nightmare of January 12, 2010.  

I will find a way to get pictures of many of these activities on the website of Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos and Compassionweavers.com as soon as I can.  

Many thanks to all of you for your prayers, donations, encouragement !    

Fr Rick Frechette July 20, 2010

Below Fr. Rick Frechette shares on how faith has given him strength during this tragic situation.

It is traditional in the Catholic faith to celebrate mass in remembrance of the dead after one month has passed. Today throughout Haiti, at 7 am, in what is left of the parishes of Port au Prince, this mass will be celebrated for the estimated 200,000 dead from the earthquake. In addition to these masses, President Preval has declared today to be a day of national fast, and the beginning of three days of national mourning. We are participating in this act of solidarity by offering mass at 7 am at Titayin, together with Bishop Dumas, at the burial place of the indigent and unknown dead from the earthquake. We ourselves have buried about 2,500 people there in the last 30 days.

After weeks of frenetic activity, we are returning to a state of equilibrium. Our hospital had become a trauma MASH unit, as had all other medical centers in Port au Prince that are still standing. We were able to offer about 30 surgeries a day at four sites (two in our hospital, one on our hospital grounds in a tent, and one at the St. Camillus Hospital, which we staffed for the emergency.) Many of these, sadly, were amputations – sometimes two for the same adult or child. 

To give an idea of the size of the problem, it is likely there are about 20,000 people now who have been amputated or who have orthopedic hardware screwed through their skin to the bone. Port au Prince has about 20 Haitian orthopedic surgeons, and visiting teams to Haiti will soon leave. All 20,000 need to be followed closely for removal of hardware, control of infection, reevaluation of the amputation, and of course for artificial limbs and rehabilitation. Obviously 20 surgeones will not be able to handle this load. We have worked closely with the St. Camillus Hospital so as to return our St. Damien Hospital to a pediatric center and to have a growing center for adults at St. Camillus. We hope tobgether to be able to keep good tabs on the patients we have operated on, and hoep to be able to provide well for them in the future. 

In collaboration with the Papal Nuncio, the president of the Haitian bishops conference, the local CARITAS office and the Italian Protezione Civile, we are setting up seven positions in the provinces, (especially since about 30% of the population has abandoned the capital) to be able to help enable access for these people to a medical system. We can do our best to follow a certain number patients from these sites, return them to Port au Prince for needed attention- by helicopter or land,- and use these points as well for large distributions of food and educational materials for schools. We hope to continue to partner with St. Camillus and the Haitian bishops to strengthen a similar response within Port au Prince as well.

At Francisville, we are making a center for production of artificial limbs. Gena Hergaty hosted a meeting two days ago of30 non-governmental organizations at our St. Germaine program, to determine the best collaboration for all those eager to invest in rehabilitation and physical therapy.

On the home front, Erin Kloos has made an exceptional recovery after being dug out of our crumbled Fr. Wasson Center. The funeral of her brother Ryan will be later this month in Phoenix. Fr. Craig Hightower celebrated the funeral of Molly Hightower, concelebrated by Fr. Phil Cleary. I hope I can arrange to leave Haiti for a few weeks at the end of February to see my father, and to visit both families for mass in their homes. 

We offered mass last Saturday for Molly and Ryan on top of the rubble of the Fr. Wasson Center on an altar made of fallen block, using chant and incense to honor Molly and Ryan and all who died in the earthquake, and to show our faith and hope, and determination to rebuild and continue our life giving mission.

 The Fr. Wasson Center is being cleared by heavy government equipment, and we will rebuild a central administration center on the site, with a metal instead of cement framework, which are fast becoming popular here. We will also make an artistic monument to stand prominently on the corner, by a famous Haitian artist, dedicating the new center to Ryan and Molly and honoring all the victims of the earthquake.

In Tabarre our three areas of destruction were the perimeter walls, the tower, and the chapel. The Italian Protezzione Civile is clearing the debris, reinforcing the tower, rebuilding the chapel and rebuilding the walls. Additional internal, non-structural damage to the hospital is being repaired by the Italian companies that made the initial installations (especially the central oxygen supply). The new maternity and neonatal program, born of necessity during the traumatic days following the quake, is following a good and logical course, and the rest of the hospital is returning to normal. 

Our surgical capacity will still be challenged as we tend to many postoperative children and new traumas. The cancer center got quite a boost, thanks to Sister Judy, as it is now a partner with the Danny Thomas Children’s Cancer Hospital in the USA. This will bring quite a help for development, diagnostic, training, material and medicines.

The St. Helene orphanage in Kenscoff was largely spared, but we were glad to see so much charitable activity on the part of the children, coming to the hospital to visit injured children and distributing food and supplies in the tent cities.

The Family Services team has been very attentive to vulnerable children in the tent cities and has elaborated a good plan for continued involvement. Future reports will be given on all these points I mention in this summary by the people involved.

We are still gathering the names of those who have died or disappeared in the rubble. We hope soon that Daniela, our temporary home correspondent, will be able to make a memorial page on the NPH website. We are very much struck with sorrow by the deaths of our colleagues or deaths in their families.

The St. Luke program has been valiant and tireless, and we suffered the loss of some staff and directors. We also suffered the loss of one third of our 18 street schools. We will resume school in tents, as soon as we have enough, and thanks to Artists for Peace and Justice, we are studying all aspects of rebuilding.

Everywhere around us there are huge social problems: woundedness, homlessness and hunger. There are wounded, homeless and hungry among our 800 employees (all programs combined, including St. Luke). This is made more dreadful by the advance of the rainy season. We had our first rain yesterday.

In a separate letter over the next few days, I will outline the investment we hope to make in addressing these three social problems and the rebuilding and advance of our own programs.

For today, please join us in mourning. Join us in prayers for the dead, for the living, for the future.

Thank you and God bless you.

Fr. Rick Frechette

The Passionist response to the Haitian Crisis

The Passionist community has served the Haitian area in coalition with the “Friends of the Orphan” program and Compassion Weavers. Fr. Rick Frechette, CP is a Passionist missionary that serves the Haitian community as a Priest and a Medical Doctor. Fr. Rick ministers at two Hospitals in Haiti and with the St. Luke’s medical mission he goes out to offer medical care to people who have no access to get to a hospital. He also works alongside the Sisters of Mother Teresa in their centers for the sick and destitute dying. This video that was produced in 2008 will highlight the Haitian ministry that he has engaged with. This is a very powerful video on a reality that almost seems unreal.

This week, members of the Passionist Community will go with Fr. Rick to examine the damage done to the Hospitals and to the community that they serve. Fr. Rick is going to be asking many of us who have supported these ministries before to financially help him with the devastation to the hospitals that serve an immediate need for a people that are facing unimaginable suffering and physical pain.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The need at this time cannot be underestimated. In the spirit of Justice our first response is to address the suffering that is being experienced at this moment and when we hear back from Fr. Rick I will immediately post the specific needs that the community requires in serving our Haitian brothers and sisters.

Poverty and Debt

Let us also keep in mind however that Haiti’s financial predicament was also connected to an odious debt situation in which the nation could no longer create any necessary infrastructures such as hospitals and schools. The organization Jubilee USA was proud to post some great news when this summer the United States organized to cancel the debts that Haiti had not only with our nation but also with the International Financial Institutions (Click here to read about the Haitian debt cancellation Press Release.) At this time Congress is considering the following Bill titled the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (HR 4405) which will forgive the debts of so many other poor nations. In Passionist spirituality the Cross is a vehicle that brings us to a new life in the Resurrection. May the Cross that Haiti is experiencing renew in us a commitment to serve our poorer Brothers and Sisters directly and politically. Please visit the Jubilee USA action page to advocate for debt cancellation.