Haiti begins to rebuild

This spiritual and financial support was directed towards supporting our confreres and meeting their enormous needs following this terrible natural catastrophe (e.g. emergency help, demolition, cleaning up the sites, repairs, reconstruction, etc.).

 

Thanks be to God, following this tragedy, no confreres died. One was seriously injured. Many lost loved ones, parents, friends, etc. Of course, the earthquake had devastating consequences on the infrastructures of our Redemptorist mission in Port-au-Prince:

 

-The student house at Saint-Clement (Bois-Patate : totally destroyed;
-Saint-Gerard’s monastery and the house called Gelin: heavily damaged;
-Saint-Gerard’s church: heavily damaged;
-St. Gerard’s School: totally destroyed.

The reconstruction of the old Belgian section of the Monastery of St Gerard should be well underway by the end of the year. A grant from the Emergency Fund of $500,000 will be given for this project.

 

For these two projects a new kind of kind of construction material made of polystyrene reinforced with metal will be used. This is less costly, lighter and more resistant to bad weather.

 

Regarding Saint Gerard’s church, recent engineering studies confirmed that it will be necessary to destroy the existing building and rebuild. We will begin this project as soon as we have a firm quote on the costs (e.g. demolition, a temporary or semi-permanent construction). We foresee a grant from the Emergency Fund of approximately $500,000.

 

St Gerard’s elementary school has once again begun its instructional activities in temporary quarters, built by UNICEF on the same site as the old building. Juridical proceedings are underway in the hopes of recovering Redemptorist land on which we would like to rebuild St Gerard’s school. The cost of this project will come mainly from grants from three non-governmental agencies (NGOs): SERVE (the Dublin Province), Acoger y Compartir (the Province of Madrid) and Solidaridad (the Province of Madrid). We wish to express our deep gratitude and appreciation to these Redemptorist organizations, who with the collaboration of our confreres have accomplished such admirable humanitarian work, that allows us to continue our Redemptorist mission with the people of God in Haiti.

 

We also want to express our sincere thanks to the Redemptorist units that have allowed us to relocate our Haitian students so that they could continue their theological studies: Colombia, San Juan, Quito, Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Baltimore, Edmonton-Toronto, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre, etc.