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Haiti Roman Catholicism
Before the Haitian Revolution, Roman Catholicism in
particular and the church in general played minor roles in
colonial life. Plantation owners feared that religious
education
for slaves could undermine their basis for control, and
they
expelled the education-oriented Jesuits in 1764. Roman
Catholicism gained official status in several
postindependence
Haitian constitutions, but there was no official Roman
Catholic
presence in the country until the signing of a Concordat
with the
Vatican in 1860. (The Vatican had previously refused to
recognize
the Haitian government.) The Concordat provided for the
appointment of an archbishop in Port-au-Prince, designated
dioceses, and established an annual government subsidy for
the
church. An amendment to the Concordat in 1862 assigned the
Roman
Catholic Church an important role in secular education.
The small number of priests and members of religious
orders
initially ministered mainly to the urban elite. Until the
midtwentieth century, the majority of priests were
francophone
Europeans, particularly Bretons, who were culturally
distant from
their rural parishioners. Roman Catholic clergy were
generally
hostile toward voodoo, and they led two major campaigns
against
the religion in 1896 and 1941. During these campaigns, the
government outlawed voodoo services, and Catholics
destroyed
voodoo religious objects and persecuted practitioners.
Roman
Catholic clergy, however, have not been persistently
militant in
their opposition to voodoo, and they have had relatively
little
impact on the religious practices of the rural and the
urban
poor. The clergy have generally directed their energies
more
toward educating the urban population than toward
eradicating
voodoo. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the use of Creole and
drum
music became common in Roman Catholic services.
Incorporating
folk elements into the liturgy, however, did not mean that
the
Roman Catholic Church's attitude toward voodoo had
changed.
Nationalists and others came to resent the Roman
Catholic
Church because of its European orientation and its
alliance with
the mulatto elite. François Duvalier opposed the church
more than
any other Haitian president. He expelled the archbishop of
Portau -Prince, the Jesuit order, and numerous priests between
1959
and 1961. In response to these moves, the Vatican
excommunicated
Duvalier. When relations with the church were restored in
1966,
Duvalier prevailed. A Haitian archbishop was named for the
first
time, and the president gained the right to nominate
bishops.
The mid-1980s marked a profound change in the church's
stance
on issues related to peasants and the urban poor.
Reflecting this
change was the statement by Pope John Paul II, during a
visit to
Haiti in 1983, that "Things must change here"
(see Jean-Claude Duvalier, 1971-86
, ch. 6). Galvanized by the Vatican's
concern,
Roman Catholic clergy and lay workers called for improved
human
rights. Lay workers helped develop a peasant-community
movement,
especially at a center in the Plateau Central. The Roman
Catholic
radio station, Radio Soleil, played a key role in
disseminating
news about government actions during the 1985-86 crisis
and
encouraging opponents of the Duvalier government. The
bishops,
particularly in Jérémie and Cap-Haïtien, actively
denounced
Duvalierist repression and human-rights violations.
In the aftermath of Jean-Claude Duvalier's departure,
the
church took a less active role in Haiti's politics. The
church
hierarchy strongly supported the suppressed 1987
Constitution,
which granted official status to Creole and guaranteed
basic
human rights, including the right to practice voodoo. The
alliance with the lower classes left the Catholic Church
with two
unresolved problems in the late 1980s: its uneasy
relationship
with voodoo and its relationship to the more radical
elements of
the political movement that it had supported
(see Interest Groups
, ch. 9).
Data as of December 1989
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