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72 3 Refugee Catholicism in Little Haiti Miami’s Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church TERRY REY AND ALEX STEPICK On October , , a Polish American Catholic priest named Thomas Wenski led  Haitian immigrants in somber procession beneath the majestic oaks that grace the churchyard of Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Little Haiti, one of Miami’s most depressed inner-city neighborhoods. There they joined hands in a circle and prayerfully erected a large wooden cross in their center to commemorate the  Haitian refugees who died when their sailboat, La Nativité, capsized just off the South Florida coast at night exactly two years and one day before. Horrifyingly, their bodies had washed up on Hillsboro Beach by the following morning. “This wasn’t only for those who died aboard La Nativité,” noted Wenski. “It’s for the hundreds whose bodies were never found” in other unsuccessful attempts to reach the United States (Vaughan b). In the fall of , Monsignor Gérard Darbouze, a Haitian priest who became pastor of Notre Dame upon Wenski’s investiture as auxiliary bishop of Miami in , oversaw the erection of a foreboding black iron fence around the lush ten-acre churchyard. For years, homeless people, drug dealers, and sex workers had made free use of the leafy space at night, prompting Darbouze to raise the fence. This was his first major undertaking upon inheriting Notre Dame’s pastorate from Wenski, whose liberal politics had irked Darbouze since they founded the church together in . Fortunately for the neighborhood’s needy Haitian immigrants, Notre Dame and the Haitian Catholic Center continue to offer vital social services, thanks to a healthy dose of institutional inertia that resulted from a confluence of Wenski’s rich personal stock of civic social capital and the rise of liberation theology in popular Haitian ecclesiology. This confluence created one of the most successful, socially engaged ethnic parishes in contemporary North America. The juxtaposition of the wooden cross and the iron fence speaks symbolically about the crucial role that clerical religious leadership plays in REFUGEE CATHOLICISM IN LITTLE HAITI 73 any religious community’s service to the poor and the downtrodden. As S. N. Eisenstadt notes: “the test of any charismatic leader lies not only in his ability to create a single event or great movement, but also in his ability to leave a continuous impact on an institutional structure—to transform any institutional setting by infusing into it some of his charismatic vision, by investing the regular orderly offices, or aspects of social organization, with some of his charismatic qualities and aura” (, xxi). The vibrant survival, behind the iron fence, of Notre Dame’s social service agencies, which continue to receive some one thousand beneficiaries each day, is thus testimony to the “ethical charisma,” to use Weber’s term, that Wenski infused into Notre Dame. This chapter has two main objectives. First, by exploring Weber’s classic concept of charisma and its implication for religious-based service to immigrants in Miami, we trace the history of Notre Dame and the adjoined Pierre Toussaint Haitian Catholic Center to illustrate how ethical charisma, embodied in this case by Wenski, is transformed into civic social capital. We are especially interested in understanding the decisive fused influence of individual clerical religious leadership and popular ecclesiology on the establishment and sustenance of humanitarian services for needy inner-city immigrants, in this case Haitians in Miami. Although humanitarianism is clearly at the heart of the Christian gospel, not all religious leaders give it the same degree of importance. Weber’s notion of charisma helps explain why this is. Our second objective is to demonstrate that Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church, far from being merely an insular ethnic parish whose social action is limited to assisting refugees in their myriad struggles in Miami, is an integral part of the transnational Haitian religious field. In the words of one journalist, “Notre Dame has not only been a place of worship, but a place to build strength and solidarity within the Haitian community. It is an education center, a community center, protest center, and celebration center—the spiritual headquarters of Haitian Miami” (San Martin a). Just as Haitian Miami is a transnational community, its “spiritual headquarters” is a transnational locus with important and longstanding connections and commitments to the struggle for justice and human rights in the Haitian homeland. This struggle has itself also gone far in shaping the very nature of Notre Dame d’Haiti. The Prehistory of the...

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