Packed pews, rollicking singing and emotional devotions have marked Lent worship services at Notre Dame d’Haiti, the Catholic church at the center of the biggest Haitian diaspora within the United States. For a community caught within the crossfire of growing violence of their island homeland and disappearing humanitarian protections within the U.S., clinging to faith in God is certainly one of the few lifelines left.
“We consider in him. We pray for possibilities,” said Kettelene Fevrier. She fled Haiti two years ago under a brief humanitarian program created by the Biden administration and canceled by Trump’s, effective later in April.
At the weekend Mass closing a Lent revival program, Fevrier sang with the choir that kept greater than a thousand congregants dancing within the aisles well past midnight. Singing is praying, she said, and she or he has two major intentions.
“First, that I stay here,” she said. “Second, that God will lead me on the best path.”
Among those swaying to the Creole hymns was Sandina Jean, an asylum-seeker who fled Haiti in 2023. In her increasingly gang-controlled homeland, such a celebration could be hard to soundly hold, she said.
“Haiti is getting worse. We don’t have a house to return to,” Jean said. “When you pray, whenever you come to Mass, it lets you keep moving.”
The spiritual home of the Haitian diaspora
Notre Dame d’Haiti was founded nearly 50 years ago as a mission of the Catholic Church in Little Haiti, a neighborhood near downtown Miami that grew as people fled waves of turmoil. About half one million Haitians live in Florida, making greater Miami by far their largest home away from home.
“Notre Dame d’Haiti is the purpose of rallying of this community,” said the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary, who has led the parish since 2004. “We accompany Haitian migrants to integrate in U.S. life.”
Today, their best need is a way of peace.
“People are very desperate, broken, hopeless and at the identical time, they proceed to consider,” Jean-Mary said.
The gangs that control the overwhelming majority of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, have stepped up the attacks which have killed 1000’s of individuals across the country and left multiple million homeless. Sixty thousand were displaced in a single month — a record — in keeping with a late March United Nations report.
So growing numbers of Haitians have fled to the United States. More than 200,000 got here under a “humanitarian parole” program created in late 2022 that the Department of Homeland Security said it might revoke in late April.
Earlier this 12 months, the U.S. government also announced that in August it might end “temporary protected status” for about half one million Haitians. Their status had been renewed by the Biden administration, which had widely expanded that kind of humanitarian visa.
Some Notre Dame congregants felt that these latest arrivals strained available resources — and voted for President Donald Trump, whose immigration policies have found support amongst many in Miami’s long-established Latino communities, too.
But most congregants are still stepping up to assist their compatriots who often sold what little they’d in Haiti to reap the benefits of legal protections within the United States, Jean Suffrant said. He leads the Pierre Toussaint Leadership and Learning Center, Notre Dame’s social services hub, which offers free day care, job training, and language and tech classes.
Last week, one immigration session — held by Catholic Legal Services on church grounds — lasted until 1 a.m. because so many individuals lined up, desperate for advice, Suffrant said.
“It’s never been this bad” for Haitians within the U.S. and on the island, he said. “What a heavy burden, being told you’re not allowed in a rustic that welcomed you.”
Octavius Aime said the brand new arrivals’ difficulties affect your complete community, which he’s seen grow over 40 years at Notre Dame. Many are terrified to lose their work permits, which got here with humanitarian protections, since their U.S. salaries are lifelines for families in Haiti.
“We’re hurting,” Aime said. “We are so anxious, we don’t know what to do.”
Lifting the Haitian diaspora in prayer
The uncertainty makes it especially vital to assemble and uplift all Haitians at events just like the revival, at which Aime volunteered. It centered on the biblical story of the Jewish people’s miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt after Moses parted the Red Sea.
The event’s motto was that no person can close a door opened by God — or “Bondye” in Creole, which is derived from the French for “good God.”
“We all need it at this moment,” Savio Magloire said of the biblical message as he and his fiancee watched Mass projected on a screen outside the packed church. Just a few folding chairs were arrange under the palms.
In normal times, the grounds could be full with the overflow crowd, but now many are too afraid due to their immigration status to be seen in public, said Sandra Monestime, who was sitting near Magloire.
She’s been coming to Notre Dame for greater than 40 years, since she was a teen, and trusts that the intergenerational congregation with greater than three dozen ministry groups will survive this latest period of turmoil since it’s “like family.”
Dressed in vibrant white with soft pink flourishes, a youth group called “mimers” — a Haitian tradition, they mime a few of the liturgy through dance — led the Mass entrance processional. The children are each U.S.-born and latest arrivals, coordinator Asencia Selmon said.
“That’s what the church brings,” Selmon said, of youth participation. “We help them to be involved in church, not only spiritually but socially. When the priests preach, they show people to not despair.”
That’s the message that Helene Auguste, a parishioner for the past 40 years, tries to convey to her brother, a teacher in Haiti. Every time the phone rings, she fears it’s with news he was killed within the escalating violence.
“There’s no life for the people of Haiti,” Auguste said, adding only the ability of prayer stays. “Now you possibly can’t seek advice from any people, you speak to God.”
A faith that energizes, amid crushing crises
And speak — and sing, and dance — to God is just what the congregants of Notre Dame do.
At the closing revival event, the faithful had lined up before 5 p.m. to enter the church — to get splashed, one after the other, with holy water by a visiting Haitian priest. Eucharistic adoration followed, then a greater than four-hour-long Mass and a reenactment of the traditional Israelites crossing the Red Sea to the promised land.
That’s when music surged, and the faithful jumped to their feet, singing, because the celebrating priests pumped fists, clapped and swung to the rhythm.
Even the ushers, demurely wearing white shirts, began rocking to the beat.
“If you wish a stronger faith, an energizer, you come here,” Suzie Aristide, an usher, said. “Then you get out and also you’re ready — your soul, your body, your mind. That’s what we’re: our faith.”
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