A minor seminary of the Spiritan Fathers was attacked yesterday,1 April in Haiti by criminal gangs amid the wave of violence that has been unleashed in the Caribbean country in recent weeks.
“With indignation, we observe how sons and daughters of the country unscrupulously attack private and state property and endanger the lives of others who seem to have no value in their eyes. Thus, on the afternoon of April 1, 2024, the Petit Séminaire Collège St-Martial, a historic institution, found itself in the eye of the furious and devastating cyclone of a category of people who have no borders,” lamented the CDH in a statement.
The criminals set fire to the computer room and looted the seminary library. In addition, several vehicles were burned.
That day, the same criminal gangs tried to take by force the National Palace of Haiti, the headquarters of the Presidency of the Republic, although they failed thanks to the actions of the Haitian Police and the support of the palace’s security units. Five officials were injured in the incident, one of them seriously.
Since the beginning of March, the political and social situation in Haiti has worsened exponentially. Catholics overcome all kinds of difficulties and their experience of faith is truly heroic.
The crisis is a consequence—largely—of the free actions of criminal groups that control around 80% of the territory of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital.
The Spiritan missionaries have been the latest in a long list of religious and lay people who have been victims of violence. Faced with this reality, the CDH expressed, once again, “its deep pain at the dizzying situation of chaos” that the country is going through.
In the middle of Holy Week, Father Morachel Bonhomme, president of the CDH, encouraged the parishioners to maintain their constant prayers “for so many communities and citizens” who are prevented from living normally “because of the infernal and murderous insecurity ” that affects all of Haiti.