by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - As Haiti continues to struggle under the brutal grip of lawless gangs who have now succeeded in pressuring President Ariel Henry to resign, a Catholic archbishop is warning that churchgoers in the small Caribbean state are being abducted at an alarming rate, the Christian Post (CP) reports.
Wracked by instability for most of its history, Haiti has not yet recovered from the 2010 earthquake, which killed 300,000 people and devastated the country’s already fragile infrastructure. Moreover, there have been no elections since 2019: the last elected president was President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in 2021.
Moïse’s successor, Ariel Henry, was not elected and finally agreed to resign on Tuesday amid intensifying levels of violence wrought by gangs who viewed him as having gained power illegitimately.
In a statement to the “Aid to the Church in Need” (ACN) Catholic charity, the president of the Haitian Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor, said Friday that the turmoil in Haiti had brought the nation to the edge of all-out civil war. "There is a real danger of civil war breaking out," he said. "The armed gangs act like an organized army … The police cannot keep up with them."
Concerning the rate of abductions by gang members demanding ransoms, Mésidor said: "There are kidnappings everywhere. Everyone is afraid, including the religious. As soon as you leave Port-au-Prince, you are in danger. ... The gangs even come into the churches to kidnap the people there."
Nevertheless, Mésidor noted that Haitian Christians are extraordinarily resilient. "[Because] they are used to suffering, even when, as now, the suffering is on a terrible scale," he said. "We must bear our cross and follow Christ — especially during this time of Lent. We persevere, and we count on the prayers and solidarity of the people," the archbishop noted.