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O'Malley moved by Haitians' sacrifice as he wraps up whirlwind trip

E-mail|Link|Comments () March 3, 2010 11:31 AM

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Cardinal Sean O'Malley wrapped up a whirlwind trip to Haiti with a group of US bishops this morning, joining a Catholic missionaries for Mass and breakfast before heading to the airport.

He said he came away awestruck by the destruction but moved by how eager people are to help one another.

"There's no doubt in my mind that we have witnessed here the greatest natural disaster that we will experience in our lifetime," the cardinal said in a brief interview while waiting for his flight to leave.

He recalled a Haitian doctor he met at the St. Francois de Sales hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince yesterday. His house had collapsed. He had sent his family out of the country, and he was sleeping in his car so that he could go to the hospital each day and take care of sick and hurt children.

"The spirit of sacrifice and love and service is really very, very inspiring," said O'Malley, who arrived Monday night and on Tuesday visited the ruins of the destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral.

The bishops' delegation is helping to distribute some $35 million in funds from US Catholics, including about $2 million from the Boston Archdiocese, and working to rebuild the church in Haiti. The bishops are already beginning to coordinate with Catholics in other countries; the Rev. Andrew Small of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which organized the US delegation to Haiti, is now heading to Germany to discuss plans for Haiti with church leaders there.

O'Malley said rebuilding the church and its ministries would take years.

"The needs are just so overwhelming," he said. "Only 10 percent of the country are public schools, the rest are private. The church is the biggest institution in the country, bigger than the government."

Many parishes in the Boston Archdiocese have longstanding connections to missions in Haiti. O'Malley praised their efforts and said more help is needed, including contributions to Catholic Relief Services, the humanitarian relief organization that is playing a critical role in housing and water and food distribution here.

"They're going to need all the help they can get," O'Malley said.

O'Malley said his visit also helped deepen his connection with a large and growing community in the Boston Archdiocese. The region is the third-largest Haitian Catholic community in the United States, after New York and Miami, and O'Malley has been working to strengthen his ties to the community by studying Haitian Creole.

Noting that half of Haiti's gross national product comes from money the Haitian diaspora sends home, he said people here are depending on relatives in Boston and elsewhere right now and grateful for their help.

"I'm happy I'll be able to go back and reassure them that there's a lot happening on the ground," he said. "People here are filled with determination and hope."