Archbishop Mésidor: Massacre, ongoing gang violence leave Haitian people 'exhausted'

(OSV News) -- The metropolitan archbishop of Haiti is speaking out following an Oct. 3 massacre by armed gang members in that nation's central western region, an attack that killed at least 115 and displaced some 6,000.

"Is there a plan to destroy the country?" said Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor of Port-au-Prince, president of the Haitian Catholic bishops' conference.

Members of the Gran Grif de Savien gang stormed the town of Pont-Sondé during the early hours of Oct. 3, with initial reports from the United Nations indicating at least 70 had been killed, among them 10 women and three children. A local human rights group advised the media that gang members had traveled by canoe to reach the village, which sits along the Artibonite River, to ambush residents.

On Oct. 9, Mayor Myriam Fièvre of Saint-Marc -- a city about nine miles west of Pont-Sondé, to which thousands had fled after the attack -- told The Associated Press that the death toll had risen to 115, with authorities still searching for bodies.

Youth With a Mission, a global interdenominational Christian ministry, said in an Oct. 7 Facebook post that its Saint-Marc outreach had distributed food, clothing, shoes and blankets to "hundreds of people" running to Saint-Marc for safety.

"Please pray as this (massacre) has left everyone scared for what the future holds for our city as well as the villages surrounding Saint Marc," said the organization.

The attack ranks as the worst in Haiti's recent history, which has been plagued by multiple, sustained crises such as political instability, natural disasters, foreign intervention and international debt.

Some 5.4 million Haitians face "high levels of acute food insecurity" due to the armed gang violence, with 6,000 residents experiencing "catastrophic levels of hunger and a collapse of their livelihoods," according to a report released in August by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

"The country is completely sick" and its people "exhausted," said Archbishop Mésidor in a widely circulated audio message released after the attack that was cited by several media outlets, including Vatican News.

The archbishop, who was born in Saint-Marc, said the region surrounding his hometown had been especially ravaged by violence and a lack of response from authorities.

"The situation in the west and in Artibonite, the two largest departments (provinces), is even worse" than in the rest of Haiti, said Archbishop Mésidor. "For two years, the municipality of Petite Rivière de l'Artibonite has been abandoned. No police presence. The same goes for the town of Liancourt. These two areas where life was once vibrant are now overwhelmed by despair."

Haiti's gang leaders "seem more confident than ever," said Father Thomas Hagan, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales who has served in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince through Hands Together, the nonprofit he founded in 1986 to provide educational, pastoral and humanitarian development to Haiti's largest and poorest slum, Cité Soleil.

Father Hagan, who spoke with OSV News during an October visit to the U.S., said that gang leaders -- among several of whom he had brokered a truce last year -- felt "they do have the power, because the ones who are empowering them are content with the country being unstable."

The priest lamented the "disappointing" performance of the United Nations' peacekeeping mission to Haiti, which in October 2023 authorized some 410 soldiers from Kenya to contain the violence, and which was extended for another year by the U.N. on Sept. 30.

"I thought by now that (the violence) would be all finished because they brought these Kenyan soldiers in, but they have absolutely no presence at all," said Father Hagan. "They're still at the (Port-au-Prince) airport. … The gang leaders kind of laugh about them."

At the same time, Father Hagan -- who was preparing to return to Haiti just a few days after speaking to OSV News -- said the Haitian people are "very resilient."

Moments after a devastating 2010 earthquake, Haitians "started picking up and getting themselves together again," he said.

He said that Haiti's natural resources, including the fertile soil of the Artibonite Valley, known as the nation's breadbasket for its rice and other cereal grain production, could make Haiti "the richest country probably in the hemisphere" if the nation could be freed from corruption and violence.

The people of Haiti "are a people who want to live," said Archbishop Mésidor in a March interview with Aid to the Church in Need, which under the guidance of the pope provides pastoral and humanitarian aid to persecuted Catholics. "They are a people who show resilience despite their suffering."