A French court has ruled that the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Nice, France, built with funding from Czar Nicholas II and completed just before Russia's Soviet revolution, belongs to Russia and must be handed over.
The victory is Russia's latest in a series of battles for church property around the world -- attempts by the Russian government and Russian Orthodox Church to reassert control over a widespread diaspora.
Haiti Dispatches No. 3
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti -- In a chance encounter with a young Haitian who volunteered to drive filmmaker Gerry Straub around Port au Prince, conversation turned to the future of Haiti and what might be required for the country to rise from the ashes of the earthquake in a new way.
The young man, who came from a family of means, who had lived for a while in the United States and whose family owns a factory that employs about 750 people, began describing to Straub life before the earthquake. “He said before, there were people living in misery and who had no food and for whom every day was a struggle for food and survival and those who were wealthy,” Straub said. “After the earthquake, he told me, that line between those who have and those who don’t have has disappeared. Everyone is in the same boat, the struggle for food and everything else is really intense.”
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Amid the rubble of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, Haitians celebrated the lives of the archbishop and vicar general of Port-au-Prince, both of whom were killed in the country's earthquake.
Church officials -- including some from the United States -- joined ordinary Haitians Jan. 23 for the funerals of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, who died when the impact of the Jan. 12 quake hurled him from a balcony, and Msgr. Charles Benoit, the vicar general whose body was pulled from the cathedral debris.
Haiti Dispatches No. 2
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti -- On the second day of his stay in Haiti, filmmaker Gerry Straub was able to get a view of the vastness of the devastation in Port au Prince, a spectacle that he had heard about and witnessed on television via aerial shots and close-ups, but the reality of which was beyond his imagining.
And he continued to witness close up the courage and endless work of medical volunteers -- doctors, nurses, physicians’ assistants -- from around the globe, as they attempted desperately in the worst circumstances to treat endless streams of patients, not always successfully. When they weren’t working in the jury-rigged operating rooms and emergency rooms and makeshift wards out on sidewalks and lawns, he saw them working on fixing a door and loading and unloading supplies. There is no medical hierarchy in Haiti, he said, everyone pitches in to do whatever needs to be done.
Haiti Dispatches
Editor's note: Gerry Straub, a filmmaker who has placed his art "at the service of the poor," is in Haiti and will be reporting by phone when possible during the next week. More than 15 years ago, Straub gave up a lucrative career producing daytime television to explore the interplay between creativity and spirituality. He underwent a deeper conversion while doing a book on St. Francis of Assisi, and for the past 12 years, he has documented the plight of poor people around the world.
In early December, he traveled to Haiti to begin filming a documentary titled "Angels of Compassion: the Luminous Force of Intentional Kindness." He spent time filming work being done in Haiti's Cite Soleil, described as the worst slum in this poorest country in the hemisphere. He returned Jan. 21.
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti -- When Gerry Straub landed at the airport at Port au Prince the morning of Thursday, Jan. 21, he described the scene as "organized chaos," with countless people seeking treatment for all manner of injuries and planeloads of supplies arriving regularly.
MIAMI -- The Catholic Archdiocese of Miami, Fla., has announced that it "stands ready to receive, house and find permanent homes for Haitian children who may have been orphaned by the disaster; similar to what was done for Cubans in the 1960s."
In an operation known as Pedro Pan in the 1960s, the Catholic church in Miami helped resettle 14,000 Cuban children who were sent from their homeland by their parents to get them away from that country's political strife. They later were reunited with their families as their parents were able to emigrate from Cuba.
Teresa Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami told Catholic News Service Jan. 19 that the new orphan resettlement program, being called Pierre Pan, was expected to be approved by the U.S. government soon. Meanwhile, the archdiocese was fielding calls, e-mails and Web postings from people around the country offering to take in Haitian children, either temporarily or to adopt them.
Forty-eight years ago my wife Margaret and I were in Port-Au-Prince on our honeymoon. It was the first week of our marriage and we visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption for God's blessings on our marriage. Almost five decades later, we are grateful for God's blessings.
Today, the cathedral is in ruins. The archbishop of Port-Au-Prince is dead. As many as 20 priests and seminarians are known to be dead as well. An estimated 200,000 people have died as a result of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
WASHINGTON -- Facing a growing humanitarian crisis after the largest earthquake in Haiti in two centuries, Catholic aid agencies and world governments were boosting efforts to respond to the needs of hundreds of thousands of injured and homeless.
Agencies such as Jesuit Refugee Services and Catholic Relief Services as well as smaller organizations from around the world have raised millions of dollars to provide medical services, feed and shelter people and head off the rapid spread of disease.
The agencies were coordinating efforts with other religious, nongovernmental and government operations as hunger grew and some Haitians became increasingly impatient because they had received little or no assistance in the week since the Jan. 12 quake.
VATICAN CITY -- Amid the chaos and rubble, survivors of the Haiti earthquake sing and pray together, showing unity in times of devastation, said Michelle Hough, a communications officer for Caritas Internationalis.
Hough, who works in the Vatican-based headquarters of the umbrella organization for national Catholic charities, was sent to Haiti as a member of the international rescue staff to help with operations in the area. Hough has been recounting her experiences through daily blog updates from Haiti.
Editor’s note: Tom Roberts, NCR editor at large, traveled to Haiti and the Dominican Republic in October with two other journalists, winners of Catholic Relief Services’ Eileen Egan Award for Journalistic Excellence. The trip was sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, which prepared the itinerary. As such, it serves as a backgrounder to the current disaster.
HAITI and DOMINICAN REPUBLIC -- Our small group and several dozen other people, most of them presumably from Haiti, embarked on a trip from the ground level of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport in late October. No one opened or inspected any of our bags or the various boxes going on board the small propeller-driven commuter plane. No one was required to go through any screening devices.
It was the first time since 9/11 that any of us -- three journalists and two staff members of Catholic Relief Services -- could recall leaving a U.S. airport for anywhere without having to go through even minimal security. In a later phone call to the airline counter, a man who claims he’d been loading passengers there for five years said the airline never conducted any security because it was small and isn’t considered a threat.
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