News Editor
LINCOLN
PARK - The globally minded Catholics at St. Joseph Parish here are on a mission
- not only to build new, improved and greatly expanded schools in a remote
region of western Haiti, but also to help save one poor child at a time by
providing a quality, faith-centered education.
A team of St. Joseph's parishioners - led by their own Deacon Joseph
Parlapiano - has been traveling to the mountainous Diocese of J}r}mie to
help break the cycle of extreme poverty for more than 500 children there. Fueled
by the generosity of benefactors far and wide, this contingent of has been
offering an increased number of scholarships to these grammar and now high
school students. They also have been completely refurbishing their school
facilities.
This past month, the St. Joseph's faith community stepped up its longtime
commitment to the people of its sister parish in J}r}mie , St. Martin de Tour in
Grand Vincent, by subsidizing 100 more scholarships for students, bringing the
total number of children who are able to pursue an education to about 575. The
parish held a sign-up for scholarship pledges after all Masses the weekend of
May 20-21.
"Now a person sponsoring a child can have a picture of him or her on the
mantle or the table. Those children are their kids," said Deacon Parlapiano of
Denville, who led the drive that collected the $75 pledges each from new
benefactors and from parishioners who have recommitted to the children they had
sponsored previously. Each pledge profile featured a child's photo, birth date
and name.
The Haiti scholarship program has attracted donors far beyond St.
Joseph's boundaries. The deacon got two Lincoln Park churches involved: St.
Andrew's Episcopal and First Reformed, making the effort truly ecumenical. Also,
many concerned people, from a Muslim to others from out of state - including
some of the Jewish faith from as far away as Florida - have contributed.
"You don't have to be Catholic to love children," said Deacon Parlapiano,
an immigration lawyer from Newark who has served St. Joseph's for the past five
years and who last took a small team of parishioners down to Haiti for a mission
trip March 24-29. "This cuts across all lines, all denominations and across the
sea."
A supporter of the mission, Father Philip LeBeau, St. Joseph's pastor,
noted that the parish's mission to Haiti "gives our parishioners direct
involvement" in helping the poor, whom he described as "the forgotten of the
forgotten in jungle." Also, the generous donors are able to see their dollars
hard at work, the pastor said.
St. Joseph's has been sponsoring mission trips to J}r}mie , a remote
region in the jungles of the island nation, since 2001. Since then, the parish
has raised - and spent - thousands of dollars to renovate an old convent into
the new and improved Santo Maria Gorretti grammar school. He has raised $16,000
for a capital fund for construction projects.
There, St. Joseph's added a ninth-grade class and plans to open a
10th-grade in the fall for a regional high school, Notre Dame. For that, the
parish will hire even more Haitian-native teachers. The school has been able to
attract certified teachers, because the parish is now paying them $80 U.S.
monthly, a "living wage" that's far more than the $20 monthly they earned in the
past, Deacon Parlapiano said.
"About 65 percent of Haitians are illiterate and have been locked out
of jobs," said the deacon, adding that new teachers, led now by a new headmaster
there, each have finished two years of college and are now accountable to St.
Joseph's with their performance, being monitored by progress reports. "Once the
students have an education, they will have the ability to do more things. The
can go to university or to law school and reach for more."
The founder of St. Joseph's Haiti outreach program, Deacon Parlapiano
added, "We want to teach the people of Jerime how to fish so to speak and
incorporate the community so it can do the work (of providing an education). The
parents here really value education."
Before St. Joseph's arrived about five years ago, education in
J}r}mie seemed almost nonexistent. Tuition typically costs $40 a year,
forcing many children to drop out of school for a year and return when they
again that can afford the tuition. Many older students dropped out because of
the difficulty getting to high school in the nearby city. Today, parents pay
nothing for tuition, the deacon said.
"Our brothers and sisters in Christ are unable to provide even a basic
education for their children, who reflect the face of Jesus in our world. These
children are the best hope for Haiti, because they are the future," Parlapiano
wrote in the individual pledge profiles.
Helping to provide that education meant that St. Joseph's and its
generous donors would pay for extensive renovations to the convent. The
building's floor plan had consisted of several sleeping quarters, or "cells,"
for the nuns. It also had dirt floors, no running water or electricity, a
single-stall outhouse and overcrowded classrooms. Also several children were
sharing one textbook, Deacon Parlapiano said.
So St. Joseph's hired local designers and contractors to put in new
concrete floors, doors, a cistern providing water to wash, a several-stall
outhouse, four new classrooms and window treatments, he said.
This past trip, Deacon Parlapiano put down a deposit with a local
carpenter, who is making 70 benches to be ready for the mission team's September
excursion. These benches - enough for every student - will have slots for
textbooks. The team was also checking on "how the money is being spent," he
said.
One parishioner helping oversee the construction project, Dick Thierry
has been so moved by the love of the people of J}r}mie , especially the
children. A carpenter and estimator by trade, he declared, "Before class, the
students keep us in their prayers - us. That stays with me. The people are so
warm and grateful. They are our brothers and sisters. They have become like
family and I will never forget them."
The parish also has ordered $9,000 in textbooks for math, grammar and
geography and for high school courses, he said.
In September, Parlapiano and the team will talk with local officials
about the parish's other plans in the works, such as a school clinic with a
nurse and a water purification system, because currently there is no potable
water, the deacon said.
"Life has changed so much for them," Deacon Parlapiano said. "The people
of J}r}mie never thought we would come back, because before, some people
came and didn't come back."
A team from St. Joseph's visits the western region that sits far from the
areas of unrest that have flared up recently.
"When I'm in Haiti, I do not feel in danger," said Deacon Parlapiano.
"What you hear and read in the New York Times, from the Associated Press or on
CNN, you'd think people are falling dead in the streets. That's not what we see
there. This has defined what I do as a deacon."
The mountainous area served by St. Martin de Tour Parish in Grand
Vincent consists of six "chapels," three accessible by truck and three by
foot. Most everyone there walks or rides bicycles over dirt roads pitted with
ruts, he said.
About 120 miles from Haiti's capital, Port au Prince, the area is rocky.
Although the terrain is rain forest, it's not very lush. People live on
subsistence farming, growing beans, corn and rice, Deacon Parlapiano said.
"You must detach yourself from poverty or you won't get anything done for
the people of J}r}mie ," the deacon said.
Yet in the midst of this deep poverty, the 14,000 Catholics there hold on
to a deep faith. About 97 percent of Haitians are Catholic, Deacon Parlapiano
said.
The faithful walk several miles - often barefoot - to church. Shoe
shiners sit at the entrance of the church for those who have shoes. The very
respectful Haitians wouldn't want to enter the church with muddy shoes, the
deacon said.
"The people down there are so religious," said the deacon, who
described some of the local flavor of the Mass there, including dancers who
bring up the offertory gifts and an a cappella island choir. "You see
Jesus in there - the poor of the Sermon on the Mount. On some trucks are
written, 'Jesus Is Lord' or 'Thank You Lord.'"
Deacon Parlapiano noted further, "The trips are like retreats for me.
This is a blessing, not a hardship. It will change your life forever."
The deacon limits each trip to no more than eight parishioners for
logistical reasons. This past March, he went to Haiti with fellow parishioners
Thierry, Ofelia Blewitt and Melissa Kaus. They communicate with the officials,
villagers and children through interpreters. On the group's first trip in 2001,
the late Father Dennis Hogan, St. Joseph's former pastor and a big supporter of
the mission, donated to the local parish down there a paten and chalice for
Masses, the deacon said.
St. Joseph's mission to Haiti had grown out of Deacon Parlapiano's
mission work to the impoverished island nation with his previous parish, St.
Catherine of Siena, Mountain Lakes. Last April, the Beacon reported on St.
Catherine's eighth medical mission. As during earlier trips, a team of 12
brought its medical expertise and medical and other supplies to people of its
sister parish, Notre Dame de la Nativite in Dame Marie, a village on the
Caribbean Sea on the most southwestern tip of Haiti.
Deacon Parlapiano's daughter, Christina, has accompanied her father on
mission trips to Haiti and now as a student at Seton Hall University School of
Law, Newark, has been inspired to take action. In September, she will be
president of Haiti Rule of Law, a twinning program between Seton Hall and the
local law school down there, which is concerned with legal and social justice
issues.
Today, Deacon Parlapiano is studying the Haitian language of Creole,
so he can communicate to officials down in J}r}mie in their native tongue
and so he can translate letters back a forth between the school children down
their and their sponsors.
In recognizing that St. Joseph's outreach to the people of J}r}mie
will require a longtime - even a lifetime - commitment, Deacon Parlapiano
concluded, "We can't solve all their problems. Jesus said, 'The poor will
always be among us.' But it's what you do when you're confronted with that
[their poverty]."
