In search of freedom, Haiti’s Bishops turned violent

A mass demanding freedom of Haiti, accompanied by Haitian bishops, became violent at the end as police officials fired tear gas in the church.

17th of April 2021

Haiti: A mass demanding freedom of Haiti, accompanied by Haitian bishops, became violent at the end as police officials fired tear gas in the church.

On April 15, Mass in Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, included the country’s 11 bishops and a packed crowd that rushed into the streets, sources revealed.

Who was this Mass, what they want?

According to the information, The Mass was the national strike on increasing kidnappings of clergy and religious in Haiti and growing anarchy in the Caribbean region. The church and other entities had referred to a strike.

“The violence has touched a high point — we observe that this is the deepest point ever arrived in this nation, and we cannot go deeper,” Fiammetta Cappellini, Haiti-based nation representative for the Milan-based AVSI, reported News Service by phone on April 14.

AVSI, she stated, is not joining the nationwide strike due to its ongoing kind of work. Still, Cappellini stated the agency supports the spirit of the strike and believes it brings attention and support to Haiti’s difficulties, which she stated have been in steep decline since 2018.

Ironically, the global coronavirus pandemic has not directly impacted Haiti’s communities as feared, but an unimportant fallout — unemployment — has additionally strained the local administrations at the worst possible time. Unemployment is rampant, unusually among the young, she answered.

“We looked at Somalia, Venezuela, and we could not have thought of seeing Haiti running down this same road (of instability),” Cappellini stated.

“The nation needs all the international assistance we can have. Haiti doesn’t have the support to face this situation alone at this point.”

Fides, the Congregation’s news company for the Evangelization of Peoples, described the church in Haiti as asking Catholic schools, religious schools, universities, and other Catholic organisations to observe an interruption of actions on April 15.

The Haitian bishops’ league asked that church bells ring at noon across Haiti and that Sections are offered for development for the better in the nation following the recent kidnapping of 5 Catholic priests, 2 nuns and 3 laypeople.

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