Haiti
Diocesan Press Service. August 3, 1972 [72106]
Jeannie Willis
(Designed to highlight one of the areas remembered during the month indicated in the Cycle of Prayer for Anglican Use as it appears in Response.)
"A Haitian could put an old sewing machine under a hood and get it to run like a car," commented an envious physical therapist who does volunteer work in Haiti for three months out of every year. And Haiti's new Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Luc Gamier, agrees; it's one of the reasons he is eager for the Episcopal Church in Haiti to have a good vocational school sometime soon.
But for the time being, this Church has all it can manage. With only 24 priests to serve some 40,000 Episcopalians in 82 missions and 95 preaching stations -- and a desperate dearth of money to improve the situation -- you can see why.
Eglise Episcopale D'Haiti was started by a young black priest, who with a group of 110 American Negroes seeking freedom from the serious racial crisis in the USA, arrived in Haiti in 1861. This priest, James Theodore Holly, soon gathered a congregation in Port-au-Prince. Within two years it became the parish of Holy Trinity, and several other congregations worshipped under lay leadership in the outlying countryside.
James Theodore Holly spent the next 50 years in Haiti, 37 of them as Bishop, the first Negro in the American line of Episcopal succession. Conscious of the need for the growth of a native ministry to serve the constantly enlarging missions, he recruited just as vigorously as he expanded the missions. By 1866, he ordained the first Haitian priest, and accepted six more men as candidates for Holy Orders. The same year saw three more parishes admitted by the Convocation. The Haitian Episcopal Church was a reality.
And it still is. Of all the overseas churches, only the Church in the Philippines has a comparably large membership. But none are struggling against such a proportionate shortage of priests, and funds, as Haiti.