Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993 TAG: 9311200165
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-19 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI LENGTH: Long
Then they invariably add: the Vatican.
"It's no secret to anyone," said Jacques, a Roman Catholic lay worker in the San Michel parish who looked astonished that a visitor would voice any doubt. He declined to give his last name.
In this fervently Catholic nation, many Haitians believe the leadership of their own church is conspiring to prevent populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide from once again assuming the presidency he lost in a military coup in September 1991.
"Nobody can tell you any facts to prove it. It is an opinion," said Ernst Verdieu, head of Caritas, the Catholic relief and development agency in Haiti. "But in their minds, there is a connection between the Vatican and the CIA. There is a conspiracy."
The public's mistrust of the Vatican - and Haiti's own Catholic hierarchy - is symptomatic of deep rifts within the nation's Catholic Church. It is an institution torn between a grass-roots clamor for change and an entrenched power structure fat with privilege.
It is easy to see why many Catholics believe church leaders are siding with the wrong side:
The Salesian Order expelled Aristide for his political activism in 1988, and the Vatican was the only state in the world that recognized the military-backed government installed after Aristide's overthrow.
Last month, as conflicts mounted over military-backed efforts to block Aristide's return, army chief Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras appealed for Vatican mediation. Vatican diplomats said they would act only if all sides agreed, but Aristide's supporters objected.
Those same military officers are now using fierce repression and terror to block his U.N.-sanctioned return.
"If you ask in the streets, not even 1 percent of the population understands the pope's position," Rev. Gilles Danroc, a priest in the Artibonite Valley town of Verrettes, said.
The Haitian church hierarchy reflects the Vatican's stance. Of the 11 bishops, only one openly favors the return of Aristide, a priest long identified with Liberation Theology, a doctrine that puts the church squarely in favor of the world's poor.
The public rifts within the church have created private agonies for some of the 700 Haitian-born and 700 foreign-born priests in Haiti, who must reconcile demands of obedience to church leaders with compassion for the suffering of their parishioners.
Some priests are openly defiant, encouraging the faithful to organize against oppression. They say their function is more than simply preaching the Gospel.
"As priests, we must announce and denounce," said the Rev. Rene Giroux, a Canadian priest whose San Michel parish in the capital is a bastion of Aristide supporters and a refuge for those in hiding.
Some priests choose to bear silent witness, and avoid the risk of being thrown out of Haiti or sent into hiding. And still others reject Aristide as radical and dangerous.
One U.S. priest in a fishing village in southwestern Haiti said that at times he could hear soldiers beat people in the building next door to his office. "If I want to be here, I got to keep quiet," he said.
Unlike Giroux, he defended the Vatican's recognition of Haiti's military-backed regime, saying it allows the church to continue working in the countryside. Speaking out might force scores of rural priests from their parishes, he said.
He said it was difficult for him to witness what Haitians endure.
"A U.S. citizen wouldn't stand for it. No way," he said. But in Haiti, he said, "it's the temperament of the people. They suffer. They don't rise up."
Many Haitians long for the church to take a more activist role, seeing it as one of the few forces with the resources to stand up to the military.
"It's unfortunate that in a country with few viable institutions, one of the few viable ones has opted not to play a more forceful role," a former Haitian diplomat said.
The Catholic Church is potentially one of the most powerful forces in Haiti. It operates 200 primary schools teaching 300,000 children, and scores of hospitals, clinics, old-age shelters and literacy centers, which employ thousands of people.
Caritas alone has 1,000 workers.
Church-state relations are close - stronger, perhaps, than anywhere else in the hemisphere. Bishops drive cars with official license plates and clergymen receive some of their pay from the government.
For much of Haiti's history, most priests and bishops were foreign-born. That changed in 1966, when President-for-life Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier won the right from the Vatican to have a say in the naming of bishops. He quickly tried to stack the deck, installing the brother of his army chief and a relative of his daughter-in-law.
Even so, the church hierarchy in the early 1980s turned against the rule of his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. Efforts to overthrow him gained strength when Pope John Paul II came to Haiti in March 1983 and proclaimed: "Things must change here."
But with Duvalier's overthrow in 1986, church unity fractured. And divisions grew deeper with the emergence of Aristide, a radical parish priest espousing social justice.
Weeks after Aristide's 1990 election, Archbishop Francois Ligonde accused him of Marxist tendencies. A week later, after an aborted pro-Duvalier coup attempt, angry Aristide supporters burned down the capital's old cathedral and tried to strip the Vatican's ambassador naked.
Today, some church leaders say the church belongs outside the political arena and can live with whatever government emerges.
"The church itself is neutral," an aide to Bishop Alix Verrier of Les Cayes said. "Our role is to preach the Gospel."
by CNB