A ‘Mass for the freedom of Haiti’ turned violent, chaotic, with police firing tear gas

A Catholic Mass led by Haiti’s leading bishops to bring attention to the country’s surging violence amid a rash of killings and kidnappings that have ensnared bus drivers, school children and religious leaders, ended Thursday in tear gas, gunshots and chaos in Port-au-Prince.

The bishops, still dressed in their vestments, were exiting the two-hour service at the Church of St. Peter in Pétion-Ville when chaos erupted inside, with parishioners running, screaming “tear gas” and “We need help.” While some made members of the congregation made it out, others passed out in the pews, left to be revived by family members and strangers.

“What is happening here is unacceptable,” said André Michel, a leading opposition leader who was among those in the church. “It is proof that the country is being governed by a bunch of delinquents. They don’t respect anything, they don’t respect the lives of people.”

Dubbed the “Mass for the freedom of Haiti,” the service was packed with crowds spilling onto the sidewalk and into the streets.

As the 11 bishops, led by Port-au-Prince Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor, walked in at noon, church bells and banging could be heard across the capital, including in the nearby mountainside slum of Jalousie.

Inside the church, a crowd of mostly young people welcomed the procession chanting as they ran up and down the aisles saying, “Nou Bouke. Nou Bouke” —“We are fed up. We are fed up,” —and “Aba Jovenel”—Down with Jovenel, referring to Haiti President Jovenel Moïse.

“It was no longer a Mass, it was truly a spontaneous political demonstration against the power, against kidnapping,” Michel told the Miami Herald. “When the Mass ended, the police fired tear gas. I almost died from asphyxiation inside.”

Haiti wants to ‘change the narrative’ about the country. OK, start with COVID vaccines | Editorial

A police spokesperson contacted by the Herald said she did not yet have all of the details about what had happened.

Father Loudeger Mazile, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Haiti, said police have given various explanations for using tear gas. He said church officials were told cops fired the gas to disperse the crowd after the Mass to prevent protests. They were also told that some people had started to set cars ablaze.

Mazile said the clergymen did not expect that a Mass to show solidarity with the Haitian people would be marred by violence.

“The church is asking for everyone to remain calm so that we can return to the route of democracy and development,” Mazile said. “We can’t achieve that in the manner we see the country is headed currently.”

Mazile said church leaders have not received any reports of trouble elsewhere, adding that the church will make an assessment of Thursday’s events around the country before it decides its next move.

In the city of Jeremie in southwestern Haiti the crowd was equally boisterous as church faithful gathered in front of St. Louis Catholic Church beating pots and other metal implements in protest.

Haiti orphanage attacked by armed bandits, children sexually assaulted, manager says

On top of its crime wave, Haiti is in the throes of a deepening political and constitutional crisis as Moïse clings to power despite massive protests and calls for his resignation and as armed gangs tighten their grip on the Caribbean nation. The U.S. State Department recently reissued its highest-level advisory warning Americans not to travel to Haiti, citing the country’s alarming spike in kidnappings.

On Wednesday, the country’s prime minister, Joseph Jouthe, resigned and Foreign Minister Claude Joseph was named interim prime minister.

Describing Haiti’s recent crime wave as indicative of the country’s “descent into hell,” the Catholic Church this week announced that it would close the doors to all of its schools, universities and offices on Thursday. It asked Haitians to attend Mass and said it would ring all of its church bells across the country at noon.

Similar announcements of closures quickly followed by other civil society groups, including eight different chambers of commerce, the Association of Haitian Industries and the Protestant Federation of Haiti. The rare act of unity was dubbed “Black Thursday,” or “Jeudi Noir” and amounted to a general shutdown of the entire country. All of the country’s banks also closed. Unlike the others businesses however, they did not issue a press release in fear of further antagonizing the government.

The Mass and protest from the Catholic Church came four days after five priests, two nuns and three relatives of a priest were kidnapped. They were abducted on Sunday while driving through the Croix-des-Bouquets suburb to attend the installation of a fellow priest in a nearby parish. One of the priests and one of the nuns are French nationals, triggering reaction not just in France but among Catholics worldwide.

As of Thursday they had not been released, Mazile said. The ransom kidnappings marked the second time in weeks that a religious leader had been abducted by armed gangs.

On April 1, just days before Easter, a group of armed men stormed into a Seventh Day Adventist service as it was being live-streamed on FaceBook and kidnapped the pastor, a well-known pianist and two technicians. The four were eventually released after an undisclosed ransom was paid.

During Thursday’s service, the Catholic bishops asked for the release of their kidnapped clergy and everyone who is currently being held hostage without families having to pay ransom. They noted that kidnapping is a crime condemned by international law.

Monsignor Launay Saturné, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Haiti and archbishop of Cap-Haïtien, said during the Mass that foreign nations should not let Haiti and Haitians go at it alone.

Bishops, he said, wished “that friendly countries not behave as passive witnesses to what Haiti is going through today.”