Parish Twinning – Haiti

Thank you to our St. Robert parish community for your ongoing prayers and generous financial support.

Uplifting news from Our Lady’s
Nativity, our sister parish in Verrettes!

School Growth & Improvements:
The parish school, Pere Andre Mitton —located on the grounds of the St. Robert Trade School—is now the “Twin School” of our St. Robert School.
Pere Andre Mitton is serving 600+ students in grades 1–13 (as of 2025), with classrooms filled to capacity.
A kitchen and outdoor restroom facilities were recently added.
Additional classrooms are being constructed to meet growing needs.

We also gratefully remember Cassie Ellis, who helped launch our Haiti twinning and Student Sponsorship program over 30 years ago. Upon her passing in December 2025, she left $10,000 to the program; AND her husband Rod generously donated an additional $25,000 to complete classroom construction at Pere Andre Mitton School.

Father Murat, pastor of Our Lady’s Nativity for 30 years, is deeply grateful for the generosity of Rod and Cassie Ellis and all parishioners of St. Robert. A commemorative plaque at the school in Haiti will honor the major donors who have made this growth possible.

—The St. Robert Haiti Committee

Haiti remains volatile. According to the most recent report from the UN Security Council, there are now 1.4 million people displaced, 12% of the population, and 5.9 million people facing hunger, with 1.9 million facing extreme hunger. There are also alarming levels of sexual violence, with women and girls the primary victims. Gang violence remains widespread, with a reported 8100 total killings nationwide between January and November 2025. Half of gang members are children, who remain at extreme risk due to school closures and lack of opportunity. Local press is also reporting horrific civilian casualties from government-sponsored drone attacks targeting gangs.

The mandate of the current government, called the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), expires February 7, with no succession plan in place. The United States is putting pressure on what’s left of the Haitian TPC to retain the current Prime Minister, which the TPC has declined to do. The US then sanctioned two members of the TPC. The United States, together with the United Nations, is organizing a Gang Suppression Force (GSF) with a goal to restore order in Haiti, laying the groundwork for future elections and distribution of humanitarian aid. The multinational GSF is due to deploy in May or June.

In this context, the Haiti Advocacy Working Group, which our ED Kim Lamberty co-leads, developed a letter to US government officials about the GSF, urging them to work with credible Haitian civil society actors to ensure that the GSF protects civilians, takes accountability for human rights abuses, and ensures that the crises’ root causes are addressed. Although we remain skeptical, Quixote Center is not taking a position on use of the GSF to solve Haiti’s immediate problems, because our partners in Haiti are clamoring for intervention to end the suffering. Instead, we are working to shape its trajectory. As a result of our letter, we already have arranged multiple meetings with leaders in Congress and the administration in the coming weeks.

Quixote Center has prioritized addressing root causes, including and especially the illegal trafficking of weapons from the United States to Haiti. Last year we sent a petition with more than 3000 signatures to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asking them to take specific administrative measures to stem the flow of weapons to Haiti’s gangs. We followed up with an organization letter to DHS and Department of State, with 95 organizations signing on, urging a specific set of administrative actions to curb the flow of weapons into Haiti. Last week we received this response from DHS. We are in the process of following up with DHS to discuss improvements. We are also working with partners for the passage of the ARMAS Act, and you can help by taking action.

In the midst of Haiti’s multiple crises, the administration declared an end to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, as of February 3, 2026. Most Haitians with TPS arrived here in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, which killed an estimated 300,000 people and decimated Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. The country has yet to recover, and Haiti is obviously not a country they can return to safely. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have filed a discharge petition in Congress, which would force a House vote to protect TPS for Haitians. HR 965 will need 218 signatures and we invite you to call your Representative to ask them to sign on. You can call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be forwarded to the correct office.

Brief History of the Quixote Center

Bill Callahan and Dolly Pomerleau founded the Quixote Center in 1976 with the general purpose of advocating for justice within the Catholic Church and in society. We initiated a variety of programs over the years, and some of the larger ones have spun off as independent organizations. These include the Christic Institute, New Ways Ministry, Prison Radio, Equal Justice USA, the Nicaragua Cultural Alliance and Interfaith Voices.
Our current work is focused on economic development through partners in Nicaragua (Quest for Peace) and Haiti (Haiti Reborn), as well as advocating for changes in U.S. foreign and immigration policies that impact the people of Haiti and Nicaragua.

About the Quixote Center – https://quixote.org/

Wed, 01/28/2026 – 2:14pm by Kim Lamberty

The theme was “Hearts on Fire—Fanning the Flames of Passion to Serve Our Twin Parishes in Haiti and Latin America.” The conference consisted of three days of sharing the Catholic faith, successful twinning practices, and ways to assist our sister parishes and schools, such as solar energy, school support, financial programs like micro loans, or how to maintain communication and success of projects during troubled times. The keynote speaker was Cardinal Chibly Langlois, the first and only cardinal in Haiti’s history. He is a warm, generous, and approachable spiritual leader with a wonderful wit and sense of humor! However, his message about twinning and Haiti was serious and grateful. Cardinal Chibly talked about “Why twinning matters now more than ever.” Primarily due to political problems and gangs, he explained that Haiti is experiencing economic collapse. Parish collections have dropped by more than 60%. Many catholic schools have difficulty operating economically. He explained that “families struggle just to survive,” and that even “one twin parish can change lives; one school becomes a beacon of hope; one health clinic receives solar panels and can now store life-saving vaccines; one small business receives a start-up grant and transforms a whole family’s future.”

Cardinal Chibly said, “Twinning is a sign of hope. Here in Haiti, we receive all you share with us as becoming our brothers in Christ. When parishes in the United States share with us, it is not only generosity—it is communion.” He ended by saying, “Hope never dies in Haiti; people still gather, still believe, and have much to give in faith, joy, resilience, and song.”

In addition, several parishioners from Haiti were in attendance. Many had experienced the benefits of twinning now and as kids. Some of them made presentations, which gave the conference real perspective. They have grown up and become leaders helping Haiti forge a new future. They had very powerful messages and were living proof of the value of twinning.

On the closing day of the conference, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami ended with a moving message about the faith and resilience in Haiti and how it is enhanced by the love and works of parish twinning relationships—and that these relationships are a two-way street. He talked about a missionary trip he once made to Dominican Republic with a group of college-age kids, “pretty much upper middle-class kids, educated in Catholic schools, kids from Miami’s more affluent neighborhoods.” Upon their return, the students commented about their counterparts in Dominican Republic: “But everybody seemed so happy.” The archbishop talked with the students about their experiences and said, “I helped them see that while [the Dominicans were] poor, desperately poor, in material things, they were rich in other ways. I said to these young people, you are obviously well off in material things. You have phones, computers, cars, etc. But why are some people miserable, even with all these things? Because they were poor in relationships. The cultures in Dominican Republic and Haiti rely on many relationships. Their villages are full of cousins and relatives; there were aunts and uncles, godparents, brothers and sisters. Everybody knew everybody.” The archbishop described that many of the American students did not have siblings at home or even a second parent in the home; cousins might live thousands of miles away. “And too often, the relationships they had were virtual ones, through a screen and not with a real person.”

He went on to say, “The biggest source of ‘foreign aid’ reaching Haiti are the remittances sent home by Haitians in the diaspora to help their relatives back home. Poverty is relative—and to be faithful twinning missionary disciples, we must encounter the other in his/her humanity. This encounter is a two-way street. For no one is so poor that he doesn’t have something to give; nor is anyone so rich that he cannot receive something from the other.”

Archbishop Wenski had extremely meaningful insights about Haiti and the faith, and how countries like Haiti suffer from “the structure of sin,” typically centuries of a repressive colonial past. He also stressed how we serve Christ when we serve those most in need. His full text will be available on the St. Robert Haiti ministry website (although the Q&A is not part of the text).