Paola Moggi, CMS
As Comboni Missionary Sisters we arrived in Haiti in 2010 within an inter-congregational community organized by CLAR (Latin American Conference of Religious Life) to provide material and spiritual assistance soon after the great earthquake. However, once the emergency was over, it became evident that the community could offer more: it started journeying with displaced people, deportees and migrants.
Initially it worked in close collaboration with the Jesuit Refugees Service (JRS), focusing on those displaced by the earthquake, later it gave attention to the “deportees”, the Haitians repatriated from the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
In 2021, after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïsedue, armed gangs took control of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Due to spiralling insecurity and kidnappings the community relocated to Anse a Pitres, at the border with the Dominican Republic.
Since 2023 Sr. Luigia Coccia is a member of this inter-congregational community. She lives in “Refugiés”, a settlement created by Haitians deported from the Dominican Republic: the border is just 10 minutes away.
To hope against hope
To quell the violence, in 2024 a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission was authorised by the United Nations, but with no significant improvement of the situation.
«For the past four years ‒ says Sr. Luigia ‒ we have learnt to live our mission “at the border”: with the people who live “between two different countries”, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, currently in tension. Most Haitians are considered illegal because they are undocumented; we also experience the difficulty of obtaining documents to cross the two borders regularly and legally. We try to understand what it means to live in the midst of a displaced people who flee gang violence, who try to cross the border for a better future and are rejected or deported after having lived for years, or even after being born, in the Dominican Republic».
A humble, life-giving presence
According to a recent report of the World Bank, Haiti remains the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean, and among the poorest countries in the world. Its development is still hindered by political instability, increasing violence, and unprecedented levels of insecurity.
Sr. Luigia confirms: «We are in a context of extreme poverty that offers no opportunity to build one’s future. Most of the people are just waiting for an opportunity to leave the country. Besides responding to humanitarian emergencies, our mission is to help find some life-giving opportunities: we organise microcredit initiatives with women’s groups and we engage in educational projects. Through scholarships we help children go to school, and we mentor them with after-school programs. We also organise literacy programs for adults and teach in the Institute of the Salesian Sisters. We are a presence that helps to build some opportunities for a people who flee, who try to cross borders and suffer rejections.
This is the Church desired by Pope Francis and reaffirmed by Pope Leo XIV, “The Church, like a mother, walks with those who walk. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; Where walls are built, she builds bridges. […] And she knows that in every rejected migrant it is Christ himself who knocks at the doors of the community” (Dilexi Te, n. 75)».