AMERICA/HAITI - Ruthless violence against the defenseless. Missionary kidnapped, Brazilian nuns attacked

Friday, 10 February 2023

MI

Port au Prince (Agenzia Fides) - "We hoped that the situation would improve, instead, after a pause at Christmas everything exploded again", Father Antonio Menegòn, a Camillian missionary (MI) tells Fides. The priest refers to the recent kidnapping of Claretian missionary, Father Antoine Macaire Christian Noah, who was on his way to his community in Kazal on February 7 when he was kidnapped by a gang of criminals who then demanded a ransom from the local Church.
"Among the latest incidents reported by our Camillian confreres in Haiti – continued Father Menegòn – a violent attack took place against an institute of Brazilian nuns present in Port au Prince. The bandits took everything away and used violence against the nuns".
Not only violence and devastation have persisted on the island for years (see Fides, 11/12/2021).
Corruption and abuses against the organizations committed to bringing aid to the exhausted population have also reached very high levels. "Lately, in order to get one of our aid trucks from Port au Prince to Jeremie, a remote town already devastated by the August 14, 2021 earthquake, where the population really has nothing, we had to pay the different criminal gangs for each route traveled in order to get to our destination. Father Massimo Miraglio, who is the only Italian Camillian present in Haiti, periodically travels to these mountainous areas. He tries to offer the population a minimum of assistance, he is a parish priest, he is building a school, he will build a clinic and a small chapel. Together with his group, they travel hours of impassable roads to transport school desks and other basic necessities on the backs of mules and reach the most isolated areas found in the Jeremie Mountains."
"Last year", Father Menegòn recalls again, "our confreres always in Jeremie had found destroyed villages, totally isolated, and organized field dispensaries and mobile clinics in this area so remote and difficult to reach. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 10/2/2023)


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