The Church of St. Clare on Staten Island has started a Lenten collection for funds that will go to its sister parish in Haiti, church leaders announced via the bulletin. The donations will be used to finish building a school. 

Construction of a new church has been completed, replacing a chapel at the Church of Our Lady Help of Christians in Haiti destroyed by a 2010 earthquake.

“Thank you for your donations and for your concern for the Church and the people of God in Haiti,” a St. Clare parish bulletin message said to the faithful, noting that the effort will be part of “our communal Lenten service observance.”                                                                

The Church of Our Lady Help of Christians in Cite Soleil, Haiti, serves an extremely impoverished and densely populated community in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. St. Clare began its sister-parish relationship with the Haitian parish in 2021 – via a Haitian-born former church staffer who served as a liaison.             

“This past Advent, we raised about $2,500; we started a relationship with them some years ago,” Father Arthur Mastrolia, St. Clare’s pastor, told The Good Newsroom. “We give the parishioners a little container to take home; they put whatever change or spare money they have from their Lenten sacrifices. Then at the end of Lent, they bring in their offering, and then we send it to Haiti, specifically to that parish.”      

Father Mastrolia said that their former religious education director, Marie Noel, is Haitian, and brought the situation at Our Lady Help of Christians to his attention. “She was familiar with that particular parish in Haiti, and she was familiar with the fact that they were building a church and a school. She connected me with the pastor, and I told him ‘we would like to help you, especially with the terrible situation these days in Haiti.’ So usually at the end of the Christmas Season and at the end of the Easter Season, we have collected these funds and we send them.”

The collection of funds began with Advent 2021; more than $9,300 has been raised so far.   

“It’s been like a lifeline for that parish. Thank God that they initiated it…And I’m so proud of [Father Edouard Ducarmel] there; he mobilized the people.” said Noel, now a Yonkers-based administrative staffer with archdiocesan Youth Faith Formation. She emigrated to the U.S. from Haiti at age 14.    

Church figures remain a target in Haiti. Last month, six nuns from the Sisters of St. Anne were kidnapped from a bus in Port-Au-Prince and held for five days before they and other passengers who were with them were released. It was suspected that the abduction was committed by a gang. Property at the Church of Our Lady Help of Christians has served as a refuge center for residents seeking safety. 

Gangs control 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The location where the kidnapping took place is controlled by the Grand Ravine and Village de Dieu gangs, according to OSV News. For some years now, the kidnapping of clergy by gangs has become a common occurrence.