Five deacons from Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield meet the poor face-to-face, as Pope Francis is asking his Church to do.
By IRIS ALDERSON
In June, five deacons from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield traveled to Haiti to see the needs of the poor there, and to help one locally-based organization — Hands Together — in its work there.
The Rev. Warren J. Savage, a lecturer in the religious studies department of Elms College in Chicopee, and instructor in the diocese’s diaconate formation program, said the purpose of the trip was to provide a context for future appeals on the behalf of the Haitian people.
For example, a $25 donation helps fill a water truck; $75 pays for one child’s books, uniform and school supplies for a year; $250 pays a teacher’s salary for two months.
People line up to receive medical care outside a mobile clinic created by the Springfield-based nonprofit, Hands Together, in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti According to the New York Times, at the end of last year some 357,785 Haitians were still living 496 tent camps in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. A cholera outbreak there this spring killed 8,000.
The five deacons from Feeding Hills, Greenfield, Great Barrington, Montague, and South Hadley, accompanied Savage, and several staff members of the Springfield-based non-profit, “Hands Together,” to the slums of Port-au-Prince and Gonaives, Haiti.
Hands Together, founded in 1988 by the Rev. Thomas Hagan after he and a group of students took a trip to Haiti, has an office in Sacred Heart Convent in Springfield. Since its inception, the organization has worked to address the educational, medical and housing needs of people living in Cite Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum.
A number of the schools the organization built on eight campuses were destroyed in the earthquake.
Deacon John J. Leary, from Blessed Sacrament Parish, Greenfield, visits with children outside the Becky Dewine School, an educational system of campuses named for the late daughter of Ohioâs Attorney General who helped fund them, in Cite Soleil, Haitiâs largest slum. Savage said recovery has been “slow but steady.”
During their stay, the deacons visited a mobile medical clinic with women and children waiting, in what Deacon John J. Leary, from Blessed Sacrament, Greenfield, described as 100 degree heat.
The deacons visited with the Missionary Sisters of Charity who work with the sick and dying, and clergy living in Haiti’s rural areas.
Leary said they also visited Becky Dewine School, a Hands Together school where only a thin wall of concrete separates students from the outside of naked children playing amidst pigs and stagnant water.
The school had its first class of graduates this year. It is named for the late daughter of Mike and Fran DeWine who helped fund the organization’s educational system. Mike DeWine is Ohio’s Attorney General.
Leary said he drew hope from the fact that some of the organization’s projects on its educational campuses in Cite Soleil are able to offer meals, water filtration systems and gardens.
“Each oasis brimming with endless possibilities of human dignity and success,” Leary said of the campuses which also provide help with employment and housing as well as education.
Deacon George Nolan, assigned to Our Lady of Peace in Turners Falls said before the trip he had done some research, but nothing prepared him for the reality of what he saw.
“You stand on the rotting garbage with the sewage oozing up around your feet. The smell is terrible. People live in shacks made of rusting metal and bits of torn cloth. Half naked children run barefoot across this wasteland, their bellies are bloated, filled only with worms. It broke my heart,” he said. “I walked across a living hell.”
The New York Times story reported numerous problems with the delivery of funds to Haiti through international organizations, and translating those funds into immediate as well as long term relief for the country where people have been known to eat food made with dirt even before the earthquake.
Deacon Paul L. Briere, from St. Peter and St. Casimir, and Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament in Westfield, said despite the squalor and misery, he felt privileged to travel to Haiti. Briere quoted from an early homily of Pope Frances urging the clergy to “get out of the sacristy.”
“No priest or deacon could get further ‘out of the sacristy’ than a visit to Haiti,” Briere said, “and no-one or their ministry could ever be the same after those sights and smells and malnourished children. To be in Haiti is to wake up inside.”
He added that he feels honored to be a voice for the Haitian people as he speaks out for Hands Together.
“The Haitian people do not have an abundance of material possessions, but they do have a rich and vibrant spirituality that permeates their lives,” said Savage said of the people he encountered and their willingness to be open to visitors who did not speak French.
Deacon James McElroy, assigned to St. Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Lee, St. Joseph in Stockbridge and St. Mary of the Lakes in Otis, said like many people, he had seen pictures of the suffering in Haiti, and has helped with occasional donations.
However, he added, “Experiencing the suffering firsthand is something that cannot be captured in a photo. The trip was a gift from God.”
Deacon Wendell Pennell, assigned to Blessed Sacrament in Holyoke, said walking through the slums, he quickly realized how removed he was from his comfort zone.
“Haiti is one of the poorest countries on earth,” he said. “Cite Soleil is considered to be the most dangerous place in the world. The children we encountered in Haiti are on my heart — my heart is heavy— I have been changed forever.”
For more information, visit www.handstogether.org, call (413) 731-7716 or email: Handstog@gmail.com
Related:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/insight/2013/08/04/1-legacy-of-hope.html