Children, lost and disoriented, looking for a safe place after the earthquake found it in the courtyard of the Holy Cross Sisters. For more than a week the children were crowded in, occupying the driveway and the garden and reluctant to spend much time under the Sisters’ rather sturdy roof.

Of course they were troubled and traumatized, said Sr. Marie-Pierre Saint Amour. She didn’t need her training in psychology from the University of Ottawa to tell her that. She heard the children’s cries at night when nightmares woke them. She saw the angry face of the devil in their drawings.

Since then, Saint Amour has come to realize her whole country is suffering from a sort of mass post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s had some success treating the young people, but how do you administer psychotherapy to a nation?

“Everyone is focussed so much on the medical, but forgetting the psychological,” said Fr. Michel Martin Eugene, a Holy Cross priest and psychologist.

There are fewer than six psychiatrists in all of Haiti, Dr. Peter Kelly said. Kelly is president of the Crudem Foundation, which runs Sacre Coeur Hospital in Milot with the support of three American groups of the Order of Malta and Catholic Relief Services.

Kelly and other volunteer doctors in Haiti after the earthquake observed widespread post-traumatic stress syndrome. They also saw that most Haitian medical staff were reluctant to diagnose depression or PTSD.

“I believe it has something to do with their culture, as well as the fact that they have faced so many hardships throughout their history that they accept it as normal and move on with their lives,” Kelly wrote in an e-mail.

Unlike the doctors, Haiti’s religious see psychotherapy as an essential, missing piece of the recovery. Working with students in education and social work, the Psychosocial Support Network of the Haitian Religious Conference has created a program to help people face trauma that has often been ignored for months while they dug out their neighbours, tracked down lost family members, went back to work and managed life in a tent. In many cases, depression, anxiety and all-pervading fear hit people months after the earthquake, said Saint Amour.

“They never dealt with the trauma, then they are hit with a lack of energy, depression.”  

“It’s a big crisis,” said Eugene. “They wander the street — broken people.”

Eugene’s assessment of the situation is rare among Haitians, who “are so stoic,” said Kelly.

“It is also difficult to institute training of Haitian medical personnel to treat this problem when they tend to deny its existence,” he said.

The Haitian religious network’s psychosocial program, aided by $83,000 from the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, concentrates on Haitians supporting each other — talking through problems with each other in their native Creole.

University student Marguerite Charles credits the Sisters and the psychosocial program for helping her. On Jan. 12 she spent between four and five hours trapped in rubble. When she got out her home was gone.

“There was shock, trauma. I didn’t feel at ease any more.”  

Like many Haitians, Charles was afraid to remain indoors for any length of time. The education student now leads a group of teenagers who gather to discuss their experience and their fears. She is passing on the experience of psychological healing she received from the Sisters.

She credits Sr. Matilde Moreno with restoring her confidence so she could go back to university. Moreno led the young people in dances and encouraged them to draw and paint, and then got them talking about their fears.

Edna Genvieve lives in a tent beside her former home with her daughter. At one point she thought she and her daughter would always live in fear.

“After the earthquake, I thought life was over,” she said. “When it rains, I’m still very afraid.”

She was even more afraid for her daughter, who over and over drew pictures of the devil.

“It’s what she was living,” said Genvieve.

Only after her daughter overcame her dread did Genvieve begin to think about the future.

“Slowly, slowly I saw that life was still possible through my daughter — that there still is a future,” she said.

- RAISING UP HAITI -
a Catholic Register special report

Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]

What now in Haiti?

Post-traumatic stress proves difficult

Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar

Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild

Haiti must take this opportunity to change

Crisis makes D&P rethink how it operates

Bold education plan held up by a lack of funds

Church holds community together

D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence

Haitians must look to themselves to rebuild their nation

From inside a brown, battered SUV, with the doors locked and the windows up, and in the company of a seasoned Haitian driver, the Petionville Market after dark is as frightening as any place I’ve ever been.

I have in my time been pushed around and spat on in a back alley in Xian, China. I wandered after dark through Harlem, Times Square, South Bronx and the Bowery in my student days. I’ve crawled over piles of garbage and explored the unlit streets of Nairobi’s slums. I’ve tried photographing the slums of Rio, while the taxi driver yelled at me to get back in the cab. I’ve walked by guards with machetes and automatic rifles to interview people in El Salvador. I’ve questioned people inside homeless shelters and prisons. I’ve been threatened by Toronto drug dealers who didn’t like the presence of a camera on their street.

I’ve had good and sensible reasons to be scared in my career.

But I’ve never been any place where the level of threat was as pervasive and constant as it is in Haiti. I’ve never been in a place that could make me feel afraid while sitting with three other people inside a locked car as it crawled along the street, with a crush of ghostly bodies slipping by our windows in the darkness.

No doubt, pre-earthquake Haiti was a dicey sort of place for outsiders. In 1994 Haitian gang members scared off the U.S. Marines with machetes and stones before America’s elite soldiers had even landed on Haitian soil. The earthquake, I believe, has raised it all up a notch or two.

There’s nothing like the uncertainty of chaos to make us afraid. The piles of rubble, the half-collapsed buildings, the razor wire stretched along sections of cracked and crumbling walls give no indication of order in Haiti’s capital. The market outside Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral in Port-au-Prince looks like a tidy, predictable, suburban shopping mall compared to the Petionville Market at night, but still every little pile of goods from used auto parts, to  cigarettes, to batteries, to discarded office furniture, shoes and on and on looks like contested territory. And every merchant is accompanied by a scowling, oversized partner sizing up each customer who approaches and every non-customer who passes by.

I did not go to Haiti to hear another recap of the shock and distress of Jan. 12, 2010. Of course I spoke to people who lost their children, their grandfathers, their wives and their husbands. I spoke to a young woman who spent five hours trapped in the rubble.

I also spoke to peasant farmers as they were recovering from torrential rain brought by Hurricane Tomas — hours and hours huddled under a sheet of tin where their house used to be, as rain threatened to wash away everything. Then they reached back 10 months and told me about the terror of seeing their houses collapse and walking to Port-au-Prince to search for their families.

“While we were walking to Port-au-Prince we had to walk around cadavers,” said Fritz Ner-Sérénium.

With 230,000 dead, more than half of Port-au-Prince still in ruins, over a million people still living under tarpaulins or in tents, there are far too many of those stories to even begin. And repetition adds little in the way of insight.

The Catholic Register wanted to know, what now? After a year, what has happened and what direction is Haiti taking?

If there were a simple, definite answer the question wouldn’t be worth asking. Journalists ask questions that have more than one answer because multiple, even conflicting answers are closer to the truth of a complex world.

But some truths are unambiguous. One of them is that 10 months living in a tent is hard.

Redemptorist Fr. Adonai Jean-Juste sat with me on a bench in the midst of what used to be his home staring straight ahead, hardly able to gather the energy to answer questions.

“Living in the tent is not easy. I want to get out of the tents. It’s too much for me now, living in the tents,” he said.

A construction crew of five men was busy on the other side of the line of tents where four Redemptorists live, mixing cement, piling up rebar, getting ready to start rebuilding the walls that will house the four religious — two men studying for priesthood, a brother and their superior Jean-Juste.

“I see the presence of God in the earthquake. Many people died. Many, many people died. We didn’t have the means to bury them,” he said. “But everyone was living in the open air and it didn’t rain. That was a surprise. I think God was with other people who died. I think maybe it was His will. It was their time.”

Haitians are the world champions of the brave face. They make British stiff upper lips look look wobbly as Jello.

The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception are all business — entirely consumed by their mission to educate the girls and rebuild the school. Meanwhile the nine sisters are living in four tiny classrooms, their possessions piled up in an old box car, praying the morning office in a crowded little corner next to the one sink they all share. They spend all day outside under the cruel gaze of the Caribbean sun or under the Unicef tarpaulins where they teach 40 girls at a time.

They will only talk about the school, the girls, the community. The closest they come to talking about themselves is when Sr. Josette Drouinard lets slip her dream that one day the students will have a chapel and auditorium — some beauty in their lives and not just dust and desks and sun. She doesn’t say that she and her sisters could use a refuge for prayer.

Downtown St. Antoine’s school principal Sr. Saint Anne Jean-Baptiste answered my questions with that same distant stare and weariness as Jean-Just. Except that in the sister’s case no cement is being mixed, no plans are being spread on a wobbly table under another patch of tarp, no promises have been made that the Sisters of St. Anne will have their own school again.

We tried to hide from the sun in the only bare sliver of shade available, while the students in their pink dresses dart around us and line up for lunch.

Jean-Baptiste allows it is a “difficult situation.”

My notes are full of sentences that begin with “no.”

“No office.”

“No space to work with students.”

“No land to build a new school.”

“Not getting enough school hours.” (Students that is, whom she fears for the first time in St. Antoine’s history may not pass the state exam that qualifies them to go on to Grade 7.)

“We have so many needs, it’s overwhelming,” she said.

But each and every Haitian has a memory from the earthquake that doesn’t fill them with horror or overwhelming sadness. After the earthquake Haitians stood together atop the rubble and dug. They moved hunks of concrete together, passing the pieces of their former city from hand to hand. Haitians were together. They cared for one another.

“It brought people together. There was solidarity,” said Yolette Jeanty.

That concrete memory of post-earthquake Haiti stripped down to it’s core, when Haitians had nothing but each other, is not a memory of violence or greed or humiliations or vengeance. For lack of any better word, it is a memory of love — true love, not sentimentality. It was the love that binds us together and makes society possible. It is the love that makes God present and promises a future.

- RAISING UP HAITI -
a Catholic Register special report

Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]

What now in Haiti?

Post-traumatic stress proves difficult

Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar

Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild

Haiti must take this opportunity to change

Crisis makes D&P rethink how it operates

Bold education plan held up by a lack of funds

Church holds community together

D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence

Haitians must look to themselves to rebuild their nation

On the anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude Haiti earthquake that killed 230,000 people, The Catholic Register has compiled a special report on reconstruction efforts in the impoverished nation.

At 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti was devastated. The quake’s epicentre was 16 km west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, home to 3.5-million people. Large sections of the city were flattened and virtually every building damaged. Hospitals, schools and government buildings collapsed on their inhabitants. The city’s cathedral crumbled, killing Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot. An estimated 1.5-million people were made homeless.

The international community sent emergency supplies, money and manpower, and pledged $5.3 billion for long-term reconstruction. Canadian Catholics contributed more than $20 million to Haitian relief.

To mark the first anniversary of the quake, The Register dispatched Associate Editor Michael Swan to Haiti to document the reconstruction effort. He saw a nation still clearing rubble from streets, still coping with tent cities, still flinching from crime, still living day to day. The rebuilding has begun but it is sporadic and not always well co-ordinated.

But The Register’s veteran reporter also witnessed hope and resilience and even some joy.

“Haitians are the world champions of the brave face,” he writes. “They make British stiff upper lips look wobbly as Jello.”

One year on, we should pause to remember Haiti. Its needs remain great. In the articles listed below, Swan tells Haiti’s story in words and photos.

 

- RAISING UP HAITI -
a Catholic Register special report

Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]

What now in Haiti?

Post-traumatic stress proves difficult

Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar

Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild

Haiti must take this opportunity to change

Crisis makes D&P rethink how it operates

Bold education plan held up by a lack of funds

Church holds community together

D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence

Haitians must look to themselves to rebuild their nation

A tour of churches in Port-au-Prince shows how the destruction left by the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake remains undistrubed. The earthquake killed Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot inside his cathedral instantly, and Vicar General Charles Benoit later. Bodies remain under much of the rubble around the capital city because Haiti lacks the heavy equipment and other resources to clean up.

View a larger version of the slideshow by clicking the "expand" icon in the bottom right corner of the player. You can also turn on captions and credits.

OTTAWA - A French Catholic school board in Northern Ontario has been ordered to compensate three members of a controversial religious group after an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal found the board guilty of discrimination.

On Dec. 15, the tribunal ordered the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco-Nord to pay unspecified compensation to Daniel, Michel and Sylvie Chabot, siblings who belong to the Raelian Movement and who operate the Academy of Pleasurology and Emotional Intelligence (APEI).

TORONTO - The head of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association is calling for a popular aboriginal play to tour Southern Ontario schools to teach students about tackling racism.

James Ryan joined Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, and Isadore Day, Regional Grand Chief for Lake Huron Region and representative of the Union of Ontario Indians, in proposing an aboriginal education initiative that combats cultural stereotypes about First Nations students.

TORONTO - A team from Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough recently won the top prize at this year’s National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Design Competition in Rochester, N.Y.

Beating out 10 other teams from New York State, the all-girls robotics team designed and built a robot which had to pick up as many white cans as possible from their field positions on an obstacle course and place them in the “finish box” within a three-minute period. “We were the only team competing from Canada,” said Mary Charles Hills, one of the team’s teacher advisors.

Canadians united behind St. Brother André in 2010

In a year with much doom and gloom, from the devastating Haiti earthquake to the massacre of Catholics at a Baghdad church, Canadians can look back with pride on one event that brought abundant joy — the canonization of Montreal's St. Brother André.

St. Brother André is only the second Canadian-born saint, the first male, joining St. Marguerite d'Youville who was canonized in 1990. He was Catholic Canada's story of the year.

The former doorman at Montreal's Notre Dame College and founder of St. Joseph's Oratory was elevated to sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 17. Some 5,000 Canadians were in the crowd of 50,000 at St. Peter's Square while thousands more came to the Oratory to mark the occasion.

Among the St. Peter's crowd was a 19-year-old Quebec man whose unexplainable cure from a cranial trauma was recognized by the Vatican as the second miracle directly attributed to St. Brother André. The man, who emerged from what doctors had called an irreversible coma at age nine, has always guarded his privacy and remains anonymous to this day.

André Bessette was a poor, illiterate orphan who, after moving between several menial jobs, was accepted by the Congregation of Holy Cross in Montreal where he lived a remarkable life of faith, hope and charity. He spent countless hours ministering to the sick and lonely and his devotion to St. Joseph and his reputation for healing attracted thousands of people. He is credited with thousands of miraculous healings and, through his determined efforts, became the driving force behind construction of the spectacular St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, which draws upwards of two million visitors annually.

Anyone who walks into the Oratory can see the racks of canes and crutches stretching up the walls — hardwood evidence of the miraculous cures brought about by St. Brother André’s prayers. He freed people of pain and suffering with oil collected from under a candle in front of a statue of St. Joseph, with holy medals and with prayers — though he never looked upon himself as a healer.

The canonization made front-page news across Canada, not only in the religious press, but also in the nation's largest secular newspapers.

But perhaps most important, St. Brother André's canonization brought faith back into the equation in his native Quebec, a province that had turned its back on the Catholic Church during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Now there are those who believe Quebec may be ready to rediscover a different side of its Catholic roots.

"Now people are talking more about Brother André because of the canonization," said Fr. Claude Grou, director of the Oratory. "There is a fascination with the person of Brother André."

A younger generation of Quebeckers has a more open attitude to Brother André than those whose political consciousness and cultural attitudes were formed by the Quiet Revolution, said Grou.

“Starting with people in the media — outside the Catholic media — many of the younger people I talk to are a little more sensitive,” said Grou. “They have not known the revolution of 1960, the Quiet Revolution. Their parents have known that. They have a fascination with some of the things that have been pushed aside in the past. They show a new interest.”

This interest shows in the revival of a pilgrimage to the saint's hometown of Mont Saint-Gregoire. For years the pilgrimage from the Oratory had been popular but its numbers had slowly dwindled until it was finally cancelled. But the pilgrimage was revived this year, taking place on St. Brother André's birthday, Aug. 29.

The Church will mark St. Brother André's feast day on Jan. 6.

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Year in review

January

• A devastating earthquake ravages Haiti, killing upwards of 200,000 and displacing millions. Catholics immediately join in relief efforts and contribute to more than $100 million raised across Canada.


• Toronto welcomes its two newest bishops — Bishop Vincent Nguyen and Bishop William McGrattan.


• The diocese of Antigonish is off to a new start with the installation of Bishop Brian Dunn. The diocese has been caught up in scandal surrounding the arrest of Dunn's predecessor, Bishop Raymond Lahey, on child pornography charges.

 

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February

• Vancouver welcomes the world to the Winter Olympic Games, with the archdiocese of Vancouver showing its "radical hospitality" to the world's visitors.


• The Vatican hosts a two-day summit on the widening Irish sex abuse scandal. Pope Benedict XVI notes the "errors of judgment and omission" that fuelled the crisis.


• Church and pro-life leaders condemn Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff for advocating Canada fund overseas abortions to "improve" women's health care.

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March

• Anglican groups worldwide, including in Canada, seek union with the Catholic Church, responding to the Pope's offer to come into communion with the Church.


• Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde reintroduces her euthanasia bill in the House of Commons. It is later defeated.


• Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, in addressing the world wide abuse scandal facing the Church, says while it is a challenge, it is also an opportunity to refocus on the baptismal call to live out the Gospel teachings.

 

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April

• Bishop James Wingle offers his surprise resignation as bishop of the diocese of St. Catharines, Ont., citing stamina issues.


• Archbishop Thomas Collins announces a review of the archdiocese's abuse protocols in the wake of the worldwide abuse scandal.


• The British Petroleum oil spill brings an ecological and economic disaster to the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding regions. The Catholic Church is quick to provide aid to those affected.

 

 

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May

• Pope Benedict XVI visits Portugal and the Marian shrine in Fatima amid concerns that one of Europe's most Catholic countries is losing its faith.


• Toronto faith leaders meet with candidates vying for the mayor's seat. The candidates give their thoughts on how they could work with faith groups.


• Quebec's Cardinal Marc Ouellet is pilloried in the national media for calling abortion a moral crime at a Quebec City pro-life conference.

 

 

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June

• The G8 and G20 Summits take centre stage in Toronto and area. Key among the agreements is the "Muskoka Initiative," a pledge of $7.3 billion to reduce maternal and child deaths.


• Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest who was murdered for standing up against communism, is beatified.


• A sacred-fire ceremony in Winnipeg kicks off the first national event for Indian residential schools survivors as part of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

 

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July

• Cuban Church leaders are key in obtaining the release of 52 political prisoners in the communist nation.


• Archbishop Thomas Collins pushes Canada's bishops to help Iraqi refugees flee persecution in the region. He leads by example by sponsoring a family himself.


• To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa, a number of her relics tour parishes across Canada.

 

 

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August

• Toronto Catholic District School Board chair Angela Kennedy is found guilty of conflict-of-interest charges for voting on a matter that would affect her children who are employed at the board.


• Cardinal Marc Ouellet is off to Rome where he assumes his new role as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops at the Vatican.


• A public outcry greets news that a Muslim group plans to build an Islamic community centre just steps from the World Trade Centre site in New York.

 

 

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September

• Pope Benedict makes a historic visit to Great Britain where he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman.


• After donations came up short in 2009, ShareLife announces a record year in 2010, with Catholics showing their generosity in donating $14.33 million.


• Big changes are announced for the Hamilton diocese. After 26 years as the diocese's bishop, Anthony Tonnos retires and is replaced by Bishop Douglas Crosby.

 

 

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October

• A pro-life demonstration on the Carleton University campus ends when Ottawa police arrest four members of Carleton Lifeline.


• The archdiocese of Toronto releases its new abuse protocols, making them more clear and expanded to include all lay employees and volunteers.


• A terrorist attack on a Baghdad church leaves 58 dead and scores more wounded. It comes just days after the close of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, which had discussed protection of Christians in the Middle East.

 

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November

• Adding to the woes of Haiti as it recovers from the devastating earthquake, a cholera epidemic strikes, killing more than 1,000 and rising.


• The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace fine tunes its funding protocols to make sure none of its funding ends up in pro-abortion groups' hands.


• St. Francis Table in Toronto's Parkdale area serves up its one-millionth meal since opening to feed the poor in 1987.

 

 

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December

• Immigration Minister Jason Kenney lashes out at Canada's Catholic bishops for criticizing his anti-human-smuggling bill.


• The Vatican gets stung in diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. A wide range of issues are touched on, including the Irish abuse scandal.


• For the sixth year in a row, the creche scene outside of Toronto's Old City Hall is vandalized. The creche is set up by Gethsemene Ministries each year.

St. Jerome’s University’s new vice-president and academic dean is lined up to take over July 1, but he isn’t really new to the Catholic liberal arts college at the University of Waterloo.

James S. Frank attended St. Jerome’s High School as a teenager, was a member of the St. Jerome’s University Catholic Community for 36 years, was married to his wife Jackie by one of his priest-professors while studying at St. Jerome’s and helped initiate the children’s Sunday school program when his own kids were attending church at the university in the 1980s.

MARKHAM, Ont. - Brother André High School in Markham has officially added “St.” to its name.

It’s the first school in the archdiocese of Toronto to officially change its name by adding the “St.” designation since the Quebec-born saint’s Oct. 17 canonization.

The school is working with the board to change its name on the school building as well as developing a new school logo, said interim principal Peter Bahen.