Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin’s home was destroyed in the earthquake and his wife injured her foot, according to news received mid-morning on Jan. 13 by the Rev. Christopher A. Johnson, the U.S.-based Episcopal Church’s officer for social and economic justice. Duracin was not injured in the earthquake. The Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince died in the earthquake, according to the Associated Press. The Roman Catholic Cathedral was badly damaged.

The Episcopal Church has four U.S.-based missionaries working in Haiti, three of whom were in-country when the earthquake hit: the Rev. Oge Beauvoir, 53, dean of the theological seminary in Port-au-Prince, and Young Adult Service Corps volunteers Mallory Holding, 23, of Chicago and Jude Harmon, 28, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Charleston disaster relief worker Jerry Miner knows the earthquake in Haiti could be the start of a human nightmare that has every chance of escalating.

“The information is the destruction is on the scale of the (Pacific) tsunami,” said Miner, who works with West Ashley-based Water Missions International. “This is big and horrible.

Note especially the how to help section at the bottom. I esepcially want to highlight Water Missions International as a worthy idea for donations. In any event, read it all.

A lot of very helpful links to look at.

President Obama set the U.S. government Wednesday on a massive rescue and relief operation in the devastated capital of Haiti, ordering the rapid mobilization of military and diplomatic assistance, and pledging an aggressive effort to save the lives of those caught in Tuesday’s earthquake.

Naval ships steamed south and flights began shuttling search-and-rescue teams to dig through rubble in Port-au-Prince. Military aircraft flew over the island, mapping the destruction, while U.S. officials coordinated the efforts of non-governmental aid agencies. Coast Guard helicopters began flying seriously wounded Americans from the island nation’s U.S. Embassy to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba., about 200 miles away.

“With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are neighbors of the Americas and here at home,” Obama said, calling the earthquake an “especially cruel and incomprehensible tragedy.”

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Look through the whole gallery.

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We the Bishops of Province Two of The Episcopal Church were gathered for our annual retreat when we learned of the great earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Having spent our 2008 retreat in that country, we were already very conscious of the desperate situation of the Haitian people and of our Diocese of Haiti. This new disaster which has injured and killed so great a number touches us very deeply. Haiti is the poorest nation of the hemisphere and therefore the less able to cope with such a catastrophe.

Our brother Bishop Zaché Duracin had not been able to attend our retreat this year, and we learned with relief that he is unscathed. However, we have reports that his wife Marie-Édithe has been injured and their family home destroyed. It appears also that one of the Roman Catholic bishops of Port-au-Prince was killed when his office collapsed during the earthquake. Along with the great number of Haitian expatriates and all those who have loved ones and friends there, we await news of them with impatience and worry, including the Episcopal missionaries who do extraordinary work in that country.

We ask therefore that the faithful of our dioceses, as well as all people of good will, pray for this people devastated by yet another cataclysm, that they will know the mercy and comfort of the Holy Trinity. To support immediately our brother Bishop Duracin in the work of reconstruction, we pledge at least $10,000 from our own resources. We ask our members to join in these efforts by giving to Episcopal Relief and Development.

The efficiency of Episcopal Relief and Development in helping people in these crises is well known. They will update their website, www.er-d.org as they receive fresh information. They are currently accepting donations to the Haiti Fund (https://www.er-d.org/donate-select.php) to support this assistance.

The Diocese of Haiti is the largest in The Episcopal Church. The efforts of their clergy and laity to proclaim and live out the Good News of Jesus Christ have in the past earned our profound admiration. Now that they have suffered yet another calamity, may the Holy Spirit give us the strength and resources to meet their new needs.

Signed,

Bishop Gladstone Adams

Bishop Mark Bethwick

Bishop George Councell

Bishop Michael Garrison

Bishop William Love

Bishop Larry Provenzano

Bishop Prince Singh

Bishop Mark Sisk

Bishop Pierre Whalon

A Message from the Rev. Kesner Ajax, Partnership Program Coordinator for the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, received January 13, 2010

Dear Friends in Christ:

We have devastating news to share with you from Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake yesterday. According to reports I have received here in Les Cayes, the damage in Port au Prince and areas around it is terrible. There is no Cathedral. The entire Holy Trinity complex is gone. The convent for the Sisters of St. Margaret is gone. The Bishop’s house is gone. College St. Pierre is gone. The apartment for College St. Pierre is still standing. Bishop no longer has a house in which to live. In Trouin, four people were killed during a service.In Grand Colline, the church is gone. In St. Etienne Buteau the church, the rectory and the school are gone.

In Les Cayes, BTI is OK, but some people were injured trying to get out of the buildings during the quake. The rectory in Les Cayes is in very bad condition.

The Rev. Kesner Ajax
Executive Director, Bishop Tharp Institute (BTI)

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The death toll from Haiti’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake is at least 100,000 and could be several times that number, Haitian officials said Wednesday.

Haitian Consul General Felix Augustin said the capital Port-au-Prince “is flattened, CNN reported.

“More than 100,000 are dead,” Felix Augustin told reporters.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said it could be much worse, saying several hundred thousand people may have been killed.

Makes the heart very sad–the Lord be with them. Read it all.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 has struck the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake struck Tuesday afternoon. There are unconfirmed reports that a hospital has collapsed. A tsunami watch has been issued for the neighboring Dominican Republic, along with Cuba and the Bahamas.

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Requiring a two-thirds majority when electing a bishop has sometimes short-circuited episcopal elections in North America. For the Episcopal Church of Cuba, that high electoral standard has helped prevent a new bishop’s election for 20 years.

On Sept. 5, a special synod of the diocese failed to elect a new bishop from among three candidates, including the Rev. Jose Angel Gutierrez, rector of San Lucas, Ciego de Avila, and the Rev. Emilio Martin, rector of San Francisco de Asis, Cardenas. Frs. Gutierrez and Martin were both on the ballot when Cuba tried to elect a bishop in June.

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The government is eroding the process of democracy, one of the most well respected religious leaders in the country says.

Former head of the local Anglican Church, Bishop Clive Abdulah, made the comment following an address on “Morality and Integrity in Private and Public Affairs” to members of the Inter Religious Organisation (IRO) on Monday at the Maha Sabha’s St Augustine headquarters.

The remark was in response to a question on amendments proposed by the Government to the Integrity in Public Life Act, which many commentators say would make it more difficult for public office holders to be held accountable for their actions.

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When Robert Allen Stanford arrived here in the early 1990s, few locals had ever heard of the Texas financier. Today, he dominates so many aspects of life on this sun-drenched Caribbean island that some have taken to calling it “Stanford Land.”

At one point or another, he has owned an airline that many locals and visitors fly on. A local newspaper that covers their goings-on. A vast residential complex where many live. Two restaurants where they eat. And the national stadium where they go to watch cricket, the island’s favorite sport.

But the crown jewel of his domain has long been Stanford International Bank, an offshore institution that attracted billions of dollars of cash from clients around the world ”” and especially from Latin America ”” seeking a haven for their wealth.

All the while, he cultivated a comfortable relationship with Antiguan officials. The bank made loans to the Antiguan government, which often used the money to award his companies lucrative construction contracts. To clean up the nation’s image as a dodgy tax haven, the authorities installed him on a new regulatory authority to oversee its banks ”” including his own.

To some, it felt too cozy.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s New York Times.

(ENS) The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is trying to evaluate the needs of Haitians in the wake of four storms that have battered Hispaniola in less than a month.

“What has happened is very hard to us,” Bishop Jean Zache Duracin wrote September 10 in response to an email inquiry from ENS. “As you may know, many people died, disappeared [or are] hurt. The whole [of] Haiti has been affected, a country where the socio-economic situation was already bad. Many people have been left homeless, with no food and clothes, etc.”

“Many of our church buildings have been affected. We are now doing an evaluation of what we have lost, but because of problems of communication, that will take some time.”

Duracin, noting that usually in such situations many people wait for the church to respond, wrote that “the church here is making efforts to help. We are preparing to send food and other primary necessity materials to victims, but because of lack of ways of communication our work is very difficult.”

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