VIVA, Mama Notre Dame! . . . Mama of the Haitian people.  Live, Hope of men and women…  We complement you! (well, at least that is my translation and I am sticking with it!)

Not such a bad thing to have stuck in one’s noggin on a holyday.

Got to thinking again not just of us still not having a proper, earthquake proof house for God (or for still too many of God’s blessed people for that matter) in both Leogane and Miton . . . but also at the Cathedral (above, top of page) and at the Petit Goave parishes (pastor below) which are both dedicated to honor the reality / dogma that the humble Queen of the Universe, i.e. our role model, was assumed into Heaven.  The below photo which I found on the internet features Fr. Boniface Sena (a great man) presiding at Mass in Petit Goave, in the temporary structure…

The Church that fell in Jan 2010 was interesting because it made the site seem grand and awesome and holy (it was, and is). But without the church, now, I am wondering what it was that impressed me so. Probably the fervor of so many many prayers having been spent in that Church for so many years…it was almost like I had a childhood memory of many, many steps leading way up into a chamber of holiness (but it really was a memory from just three years ago or so!) . . . but last time there I could not even see much of an incline to the site.
The wonder of faith, and the power of collective faith to make real here on earth in some way a hint of what is beyond our current grasp … that long march up to who we were made to become … in that mysterious place after which we long: GOD that is the love that manifested in the care of those who built that beautiful house called NOTRE DAME de la ASSUMPTION, in fact transforming a building into a PLACE, and a home for God, and for others to feel warm, and safe, and holy themselves! Viv, Notre Dame.

Another wonderful ceremony as we restarted* the tradition of an Easter Vigil at Ste. Rose de Lima in Leogane, Haiti. There were over 30 baptisms, and we all have high hopes and fond prayers for these newest Christians . . . two of whom are pictured here. Despite still not having a church since the January 2010 earthquake, and despite the occasional interruption of a Ra-Ra band’s music wafting into the outdoor Mass, it was a grand celebration with both serious and prayerful moments, moments of joy, and some comical moments as well. Happy Easter season one and all!

*Last year’s vigil Mass had to be cancelled because the the Ra-Ra celebrations (mostly the commercial ones!) were just too loud to compete with — even tho there were about 500 people in church as opposed to about five folks at the nearest, noisy Ra-Ra stand.  The moral of the story:  You often reap what you sow (Ra-Ra started as a copy-cat celebration by the one-time slaves in Haiti of the revelry they saw among their French overlords when those latter folks were taking a traditional Sunday break from Catholic Church-enforced 40 days and nights of Lenten sacrifices)!

Fr. Joseph Walter, C.S.C., Ph.D.

Before leaving again for Haiti, I stopped by the Loyola Medical Center ICU room of Fr. Joe Walter, whom I had enjoyed dinner with on Tuesday last, but who had been taken ill with an aortic aneurysm on Thursday evening. Fr. Joe is really struggling, and knowing how he has savored his independance over the years, it was really difficult to see him so utterly dependant on so many machines and drugs. I had the chance to pray that God send the Holy Spirit with Jesus’ healing force for Fr. Walter’s body, mind, and spirit.

I ask you also to pray for Fr. Joe at this time, knowing especially that many of our physician-visitors in Haiti who are ND alums probabaly remember most and count as signficant their experiences and encounters with Fr. Joe and Emil T. Hofman alike, two giants of Chemistry and caring about students at Notre Dame.

I also came to learn over the years in Holy Cross that despite his reputation for the occaisionally stern demenor with students (espeically those that needed to move from premed to the College of Business), Joe was a very kind person with a wicked sense of humor and a great sense of dedication to prayer and to the Blessed Sacrament.

My fondest moment with Joe was my own Ph.D. graduation in 1994; a faculty member was required to “hood” the newly minted Ph.D. as they both had the chance (in those days) to make their way across the stage. But neither Profs. Craig or Grimstad (my two faculty advisors) were going to be present at the graduation….

Because my family wanted to come, I was in need of a substitute “mentor.” Although Fr. Joe wasn’t planning on going either . . . in the interest of helping me out, he put on his University of Pittsburg doctoral robes and his C.S.C. habit biretta, and came and “did the honors.”

Turns out he got a big kick out of having the famous Dr. George Craig’s name announced over the P.A. as he (in place of Dr. Craig) mounted the stage and “hooded” me.

Seems he throughly enjoyed “impersonating” the world-renowned medical entomologist that day (Craig, being heavy, looked very different than the tall Joe Walter), and I enjoyed having one of my brothers in Holy Cross go thru an important ritual marking some years’ worth of hard work finally completed.

May God bless Fr. Joe!

I posited that in fact if I didn’t work harder to promote and communicate what we are doing, well, that we could lack for partners and collaborators . . . if only because people wouldn’t know the story, the opportunities, or what good we have done.

Well, turns out I was more right than I was willing to acknowledge over the intervening year-plus.

And yet, I still trip over that penchant that some find so natural: Self-promotion. So here, today, find another pledge to be a more active blogger, in hopes that those readers who find what we are doing to be worthy will pass the word along, and join the cause!  That part of what we priests do is called evangelization.  So, I need to acknowlege, internally and spiritually, that defensive evangelization is okay and even NECESSARY!

I have been honored to know many, many “Mother Teresa of Calcutta”-type folks in my life . . . a number of folks who just find the joy (God’s SPECIAL joy), the joy of love incarnate in serving others. The recently departed Sr. Jean Lenz, OSF, of Joliet and Notre Dame was a brilliant example of this.  But, well, let’s be honest, turns out that we all know Mother Teresa’s name and her works because Mother Teresa was a bit of a self-promoter, if only because she knew she needed resources to build and then maintain her new community and their wonderful, wonderful works!

So, while I have known many Saints (I suspect) who have selflessly and without fanfare done their life’s work, and achieved little or no acclaim, and little external support for their work……. and I have admired them……. and they are role models for sure……. and, they are (or were) on track for their eternal reward, and that’s what really matters…….

But for some of us folks struggling to be saints (which is the vocation of all of us), the goals can be really quite ambitious. Using science and clever, allied approaches to help folks better their quality of life by removing some of the root causes of deepest, enslaving poverty requires resources.  Lots of resources!  But the changes have good potential to be permanent . . . or in today’s lexicon, “sustainable!”

So, I have to learn (he says again!) to be more of a self-promoter. So I hope you will see more frequent entries here in the months ahead. And I hope you will be moved to work with me, and our UND / CSC team and partners to finish what we have started!

What really “kicked me in the arse” on this topic was a meeting last week with the newish (~four months in office) director of health for the U.S. Government mission in Haiti. She proved to be a delightful woman, smart and engaged. And open to working together. Well, when our group (Jean-Marc Brissau, Sean Farrell and myself) sat down with her and we mentioned that we worked on elephantiasis and NTDs (Neglected Tropical Diseases), she immediately recognized the topic and the project in Haiti. She indicated the list of partners that she knew to be involved in the work:

1. USAID (of course, her own organization!),

2. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),

3. IMA World Health and

4. RTI (Research Triangle International), as well as

5. the Haitian government’s Ministry of Health (MSPP), and

6. Ministry of Education.

That was her list. CDC was eliminating filariasis and controling NTDs in the capital region, and IMA World Health was doing this work in the rest of the country.

Notre Dame didn’t make the top six.

I said to myself: “Woops!!” . . . And I then indicated my regret that unfortunately it was unfair, perhaps mostly to our donors more than anyone else, that we would be left off the list of major partners.

Well, at least we were in good company with the likes of our longtime partner: the Reference Center for Filariasis at Holy Cross Hospital in Leogane, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Abbott Labs, the InterAmerican Development Bank, Pepsi, Partners in Health, GlaxoSmithKline, and the U.N. agencies including the Pan American / World Health Organization and UNICEF…. and OTHERS (esp. a myriad of generous donors)!!!

With the help of the Gates Foundation, we (UND) were the original funders of both the aforementioned Ministry of Health and IMA World Health’s 1st forays into this work in Haiti.

For the work of attaining full, nationwide coverage with the drugs needed to control the “geohelminth” worms and eliminate filariasis, Notre Dame provided half the funding and much of the labor to collaborate with the Ministrys of Heath and Education to very successfully complete the capital-area Mass Drug Administration (MDA) last month!

And we’ve been involved as a major partner since before the beginning, in 1997, when the World Health Assembly and others 1st called for eliminating filariasis (aka elephantiasis), and a program to treat a billion for filariasis and the major gut worm parasites. This campaign, borne out of scientific advances and drug donations (such as those from GlaxoSmithKline for Haiti), has relied on Notre Dame as one of the leading partners, and we hope, will continue to do so.

But it looks like the other partners are better at promoting their work than we are. So here is a pledge, again, to renew and refresh news and updates from our work in Haiti on a regular basis.

Please continue to read, and to spread the word, and to offer more comments and support and even challenges as you see fit! Let’s keep the discussion going and let’s have it reach farther afield (than it obviously has heretofore).

God bless!

Feast of St. Stephen, Protomartyr

26 December 2011

Dear friends and co-workers:

Diana Green’s photo of a Haitian child with Santa’s hat, sent last week from our campus office, was just too cute . . . I didn’t even want to try to compete with that photo for your attention, or with her very nice Christmas message!  I hope the message conveyed to you that we were thinking about you.  I do also hope that yes, your Christmas day turned out great, with good time spent among family and friends!  I did remember all our friends, co-workers and benefactors at Christmas Mass.

Now that Christmas is past, we again face this “mixed-use” last week of the year, and it can be a time for reflection, and for others rejuvenation . . . .

Reflection is almost made mandatory here in South Bend by the annual, virtual campus shut-down (all employees ‘cept some security / power plant / the end-of-year fundraisers, and . . . we priests and brothers . . . are off).  It seems to me as many as 90% of even the graduate students have left too, putting down their pipettors as labs go dark, or closing their books in the library — where it is even more quiet than usual.

In short, it’s like a ghost town here; with Notre Dame virtually and really shifting its focus from campus into a sort of limbo, then to Orlando for a small gathering later this week!

Since Thanksgiving day, I’ve been working at reflecting a bit more than usual, trying to write down some thoughts to be sure I am “on track” with the mission of our work in Haiti.

On that Thanksgiving day, just a month ago, in the “LOG CHAPEL” on campus, we celebrated a Mass for a poor Haitian man who died rather suddenly and needlessly in his early 40s from an undetermined acute “fever” . . . he was a father of five (four of whom survive him).  His name was Milien, and from what I could see, he was rather dedicated to doing his part to provide for his children.  He will certainly be missed.

At the Mass were about 30 people connected to Notre Dame who had gathered in support one of Milien’s family members.  During the Mass, I thought more than once also about another Haitian:  Jean-Joseph Dorvil, our one-time program administrator in Haiti (and Master in Nonprofit Administration student at the University).  Joseph was slain in a dangerous area near Port-au-Prince back in 2004 at 29 years of age.  We had celebrated an emotional Mass in Joseph’s memory after his death seven years ago this month, also there, in the Log Chapel.

Who would ever have thought that the Log Chapel on Notre Dame’s campus would become the site for intense and very sincere prayers for two deceased Haitians from that distant island country; two Haitians from extremely humble backgrounds who would never ordinarily have enjoyed any connection to a famed institution of higher learning and research in the United States?  And yet their lives, intertwined with some of ours, came to be a story of Notre Dame and Notre Dame people . . . their lives have become lessons; not lessons formally inside our curriculum, but by lives shared, by accompanying each other for at least a few yards of the journey of life . . . we have come to learn and know more about how far the Body of Christ extends beyond our own more familiar circles of experience and culture.

On this feast of the first Martyr today, I was even musing how victims of poverty like Joseph and Milien can be thought of as pseudo-martyrs in a way . . . particularly if they kept God’s will and bore their predicaments with a measure of dignity and love in life (and these two fellows certainly seem to have done exactly that).  Even as poverty and its ugly brothers might have taken their lives cruelly and prematurely, these ‘victims’ of poverty bore special witness to the hardships which any of us can face, but more importantly, they bore Holy witness also in that that they still grew in God’s grace . . . however briefly . . . and by their early death their example spotlights in a strong fashion what it is that Jesus calls all of us to when He calls us to follow Him.  Milien and Joseph did follow Jesus down a challenging and ultimately tragic path.

But they did this while loving others and loving God.  They didn’t delay following Jesus until retirement, or until the kids are out of the house, or until they finished their degree, no, they were living the Christian life when their life was cut short.  They are special witnesses to God’s power to overcome all, indeed to empower all:  through their lives and unnecessary deaths in Haiti; through the life of a baby born humbly in a manger in an out-of-the-way-place.  To the promise of glory and resurrection and everlasting peace.

That all these lives affect us, deeply, even at the ivory tower of Notre Dame, is special testimony to our—to your—openness to and love for others and to God.  Thank you.

I have been talking to some of my pastor friends this month, and found out that as usual, there are material concerns on their minds!  Some of them are worried that with Christmas and the 1 January Holydays both falling on a Sunday, they will be “down” (I gather that means short!) in their end of the year $ collections.

I guess I have somewhat of a similar concern for our program, albeit wrought of different circumstances.  We have enjoyed support from so many, but in very generous fashion especially from the Gates Foundation over these last 12 years.  Within a few months, we expect that support to close out.  It was a long and extraordinary run of support.  I’m afraid in that future without Bill and Melinda helping us, we at the Haiti Program will be leaning more on you and your networks to help maintain the efforts we’ve developed (with your help) to help define best practices as we eradicate and control Neglected Tropical Diseases in Haiti.

In particular, today I want to mention that our team of ambitious and long-serving urologists have a plan to conduct 200 hydrocelectomies during the 1^st part of 2012.  Unfortunately, the in-country costs to perform these operations is around $500 per case (at Hospital Cardinal Leger).  We are looking at ways to cut our costs in Haiti (the Missionaries of Christ the King sisters do a great job staffing the O.R., but they are relatively expensive compared to other facilities, like Holy Cross Hospital), and we do anticipate having between $20 and $25K available to support this work at the outset of 2012.  But there is still quite a shortfall.  We are also working to partner with other organizations to keep Haiti’s effort in this among the top 3 or 4 such programs around the world addressing filarial complications in urology.

So, if you have any ideas on networks of support we can look to, please let me know!  And perhaps most urgently, if you know of ND alums who will be making their contribution to the annual fund this last week of the year, please do work to persuade them to designate their contribution to the annual fund for the UND Haiti Program and this surgical campaign of 2012!  The best way to do this is to either send their contribution to my attention at 100 Corby Hall | Univ Notre Dame, IN  46556 by Saturday, or if they are making their contribution directly to the annual fund, to note on their check / e-memo that their contribution is for the Haiti Program.  If you have any classmates / friends who are willing to help out this way this year, please have them send me a copy of the check or contribution form so we can ensure the gift is properly routed for our program.  They will be helping fellow alums alleviate suffering for 200 boys and men suffering from some of the poverty and disability which lymphatic filariasis has left them stuck with, thru no fault of their own.

I know there has been some debate about whether contributions to the Haiti Program count as annual fund donations, and if said contributions will indeed make the donor eligible for football ticket lotteries, etc.

I assure you that we are indeed a priority of the University (thanks to Dean Crawford and President Jenkins’ strong support), and so contributions do count as a standard alumni contribution, and so please ask any who are in doubt about this to feel free to call me at 574 274-1063.

Of course as always we appreciate any effort in this regard, just as we have valued your participation, help and support over the years with this Haiti project, whether it be by coming to work with your hands, minds and spirits in Haiti, to help advocate in the fight against neglected diseases, or to raise funds in the USA, or simply with your prayers.

I also want to especially thank the alumni surgeons and their friends who have been so very ambitious about what we (ND) can do to help Haitians!  And our campus / Haiti-based staff members who make this ALL possible through their tireless and persistent efforts.  BRAVO!

May God, through the intercession of His Blessed Mother, bless you in 2012!

I concelebrated with 3 bishops and over 60 priests today the funeral of The Rev. Pere Ronal Flervil at St. Bernadette Church in Port-au-Prince. Pere Ronal was the pastor of St. Gabriel’s in Beausajour, the community located at the top of the highest point in the Leogane commune (the funeral was held at Ste. Bernadette in part I suspect because it is one of only three Churches left standing in the entire Archdiocese south of the northern and eastern frontiers of Port-au-Prince).

What a sad event, but also a great tribute to this fun-loving and ENTHUSIASTIC young priest of only 45 years of age. He was conducting a group of foreigners on the way up the mountain when he suffered what reportedly seemed like a stroke on Friday, then died on Sunday at a hospital in the capital. I had come to know the Pere during his regular Leogane visits to take advantage of a nice shower and a good bed, and the incredible welcoming hospitality of our pastor in Leogane, Fr. Marat Guirand. I can remember ALL the laughing and joking that always accompanied his visits—filling the rectory, then, just as suddenly, he would be gone at 3 in the morning to leave to climb the mountain to be back at St. Gabriel for morning Mass. Fr. Ronal had served at some of the very remote and most difficult assignments in his Archdiocese over his 12 years as a priest, including on the very poor island of LaGonave. Probably Archbishop Miot knew he would thrive in these situations as he had grown up in the remote mountain community of Delatte at the western frontier of the Archdiocese. His mother and the rest of the family returned to Delatte and St. Martin of Tour’s parish today with Father’s body for burial. May God comfort them especially with the knowledge that Pere Ronal races now toward eternal happiness.

Fr. Ronal had escaped death two other times within the last couple of years; once on the same, steep path to his mountaintop parish, when his car flipped over, pinning him under it until kindly passersby helped him out of the wreck and to Hopital Ste. Croix. Then later he, like so many of us, felt blessed to escape the danger we faced and when so many others perished in the 12 January 2010 quake.

One of the other priests told me today that an autopsy concluded that a cerebral attack, due to an apparent malaria infection, was the cause of Pere Ronal’s death. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he may have ignored feeling sick and a fever; so eager as I know he would have been to go with his visitors up the hill to St. Gabriel’s. He was VERY eager to continue to help the community there in so many ways . . . including with the sacraments . . . but with the Church destroyed in the earthquake, there was so much to do and the “blan” would only likely have had one chance to go up and visit the parish. Was Pere Ronal in this sense then a martyr for the people of Beausajour, having ignored his body’s warning signs in devotion to bringing the people of Beausajour the succor that the foreigners’ visit promised? Stranger things have happened in Haiti, believe me! I hope not in this case, but then again I know it is possible. I hope the foreigners know how eager was his hope they would help, and that they are able still to find the wherewithal and partners to help the people of St. Gabriel’s. There was before Pere Ronal’s death I think hope to restore the dispensary and other activities that the parish was involved with . . . but the road to just getting back a Church was going to be a long slog. He needed all the help he could find! May the Holy Spirit and his intercession help now from Heaven.

Well, as a Tomas myself, I’m praying tonight that my name does not become more famous.

The scope of suffering from a direct hit by a major storm on an already and still reeling Haiti is UNIMAGINABLE.

I am thinking of the tent encampments of “internally displaced persons,” (a.k.a. that’s ‘folks’) — in Leogane in particular, and how the flimsy tattered, sun-worn cloth tarps and tents and sharp-edged shards of corrugated tin might act in a storm. And then the aftermath. Horrible just to imagine.

I for one had been relaxing a bit after prayers were answered and what was predicted as a rough hurricane season did not materialize, thanks to many storms passing northward into the Atlantic.

But here, now, toward the end of the season, we have a tough storm that has affected St. Lucia and other islands. Tomas now threatens Haiti and the Dominican Rep.

Please be praying these next hours that the storm may weaken and turn away from the land. Turn the storm away especially from the children who seek refuge and from parents who strive to protect them.

Yes, prayers do have an effect!! Urge this as an intention to all you know. This is what we do, part of who we are. God knows and understands all; we can do what we are called do by this life in this world (and that is to care for others), and then leave the rest in God’s hands.

As a priest, and also a member of the Univ. Notre Dame faculty doing public health / research work on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, I’ve been privileged to be part of a team working to forever eliminate lymphatic filariasis (a.k.a. elephantiasis), and to work toward controlling malaria, dengue fever, three kinds of soil transmitted worm infections, and iodine deficiency disorders.

But isn’t this bragging just a bit?  And in a rather public forum at that (the Internet)? 

Well, since I am on faculty at the Notre Dame, where appropriate (great?) defense in athletics (especially football) has more often than not been a secret to our success, let me try some circuitous justification for a blog . . .   

Hopefully I’ll not be stretching the oft-trite image of sport as a metaphor for life too much here, but I’m going to give in and try a bit to blog—with the justification that I simply have to—there is no choice.  It’s not about bragging (tho it may seem so) and it’s not about being self-centered (tho that may leak thru at times) . . .  And not that I’ve been particularly good at following the Gospel instructions anyway, but, well, this web stuff is SO very public!  I’ll use the need for defense (particularly of the “why?”) of what we are doing in Haiti as an excuse to report (interestingly I’ll hope) on what it is that we are doing.  I’ll just have to hope it doesn’t seem like bragging.  Or rely on commentators to groan about hypocrisy when I do.

Moreover, because (again, as they say in sports) we want to help the Haitian people finish and “win” what we have helped them to start (a battle to stop elephantiasis), advocacy from a defensive perspective seems A-okay to me!  To again use a football image, for our project, we are past the 50 yard line and well into enemy territory; perhaps we are even close to the red zone.  Without good defense, we could lose our gains – and this would be a tragedy for several million folks in Haiti and perhaps even beyond Haiti!  So let this blog be a sort of defense of why we need your help to keep working toward the goal line of a historic scientific and public health achievement, namely the elimination of lymphatic filariasis and malaria as public health problems in Haiti, Hispaniola, and beyond.

In the aftermath of the horrific tragedy of the 12 January 2010 earthquake here in Haiti, it is even more important, it’s turning out, to defend what we have been working on in Haiti for 17 years.  To defend our work as critically important to a better future for Haiti.  There are so many many legitimate and important needs now in the aftermath of this disaster – perhaps the greatest disaster in recorded history to date!  But we cannot allow efforts toward the permanent elimination of a couple of terribly burdensome infections, and the control of several other taxing health burdens be abandoned or even weakened during this very difficult period for Haiti.  In fact, I will argue with anyone, it has been through the capacity built by these public health research programs that we and others have been positioned (actually poised), and ultimately able to offer tremendous relief to thousands over the four and a half months since the earthquake.

The name of this blog (obviously I hope) refers then to what I have come to see as the now virtual necessity of blogging – blogging not to brag about what it is that we do in the Notre Dame Haiti Program, but as a way of participating in the new global village . . . those town square conversations and debates made possible by the World Wide Web.  More and more I have found that the curiosity about what it is that we are doing in Haiti and elsewhere, if not sated, contributes to a bit of a questioning of the importance of our goal and our strategies.  People expect to know what is going on with work they are invested in — more and more every day – and especially so when the Internet makes us all so very very close.

This is in fact a thing so very very good, because in the REAL Spirit of the Gospels (that Holy Spirit of the Gospels), one person on continent A can now truly be concerned for and interested in sisters and brothers on a distant Caribbean Island (and vice versa) in ways never before possible.  We have seen this growing concern every year with more and more young people eager to love those they do not know half a world away.  Neat!

 Today is the 144^th anniversary of the dedication of the statue of Notre Dame atop the 2^nd Main Building erected at Notre Dame, Indiana.  When that building and statue were completely destroyed in a fiery blaze not even 14 years later, Fr. Edward Sorin, C.S.C. declared that the UND family had simply not dreamed big enough about how they could honor our Blessed Mother and her remarkable path to the heavens.  In 2010, as Haiti is now in some ways so broken, let our Notre Dame family be one means of healing and rebuilding – in fact of ‘building back a better Haiti’.  We can contribute in many ways and will, but the health-related work we started in 1993 here will, with God’s help, be at the front of our contribution to how Haiti can be an even better place for folks to live in peace and joy and worship God while loving one another. And that takes us back to the Gospel, again.  Whew.  Thank goodness.