Greetings from Andrea Bocelli to Father Rick and the children of Haiti on the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake

Watch here the video:

Greetings from Andrea Bocelli to Father Rick and the children of Haiti on the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake

Message from Fr. Rick on NPH Haiti’s 25th anniversary, and the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake

“Choose to build rather than to destroy,
to persevere rather than to quit,
Choose to praise rather than to tear down,
to heal rather than to wound,
Choose to give more than to take,
to respond rather than to delay,
Choose to bless rather than to curse,
to pray rather than to despair.”
[unknown]

Dear friends,
This time last year, I wrote about our beloved chapel, St. Philomena, which had stood through the destruction and shock of 2010. She was cracked and weakened, and held up by struts, inside and out, which looked like crutches. A church on crutches—a fitting image in a country where so many people were left limping, or limbless, or worse.

“Choose to build rather than to destroy”
During 2011, the chapel enjoyed an artistic renovation, and a beautiful painting of resurrection now covers the once broken stones of the back wall.  The front wall was repaired and secured with additional support. Throughout 2011, we find ourselves to be guided by the spirit of Resurrection, as we rebuilt so much of what had fallen, and even more beyond that. Building up healthcare, education and outreach services, building up programs and people, such that of all our leaders are Haitian, many of them hailing from our original home and school, St. Helene. The post earthquake programs of 2010 have flourished and continued to grow to serve the marginalized and unfortunate, and give dignity to thousands.

“Choose to heal rather than to wound”
As we reflect on the second anniversary of the earthquake, which is also our 25th year in Haiti, we can see very clearly the fruit of our labor in all we have accomplished.
-The Fr. Wasson Angels of Light program for vulnerable and displaced children permanently cares for 180 children daily while an additional 700 children from the community attend the onsite primary school.
-St. Helene in Kenscoff opened their doors to over 60 new children.
-A housing complex was build for our high school and university students.
-The new maternity program cared for and delivered 4,799 babies.
-Neonatalogy gave life to 640 premature and endangered babies.
-Our cancer center has served 140 children providing them a second chance in a country where cancer is s death sentence.
-Public health services reach 20,000 people still living in the deplorable condition of the tent cities.
-Rehabilitation programs of St. Germaine and Kay Elaine assisted 1,500 adults and children.
-More than 1,600 jobs are provided with each person supporting a family of four.

“Choose to give more than to take”
We gave
-3,000 bags of rice weighing 25 kilograms each
-852,000 bread units
-199,000 packages of pasta
-1,728 trucks of water
-thousands of burials, too many to count.
-thousands of cement blocks to make homes and cobblestone to build roads.

“Choose to love rather than to hate”
On this 25th anniversary of our programs in Haiti, it is worth to remember our mission. Fr. Wasson built NPH on the gospel values of unconditional love and acceptance, and of indebtedness to the community. Work and responsibility were cornerstones of the home. In the 1980’s, NPH started becoming multinational, extending to nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean today. When I joined Fr. Wasson I did not work with him on the traditional program but rather on social aspects of the program. I worked on projects such as community involvement, life food distributions to Yucatan, explorations of Central America to find the sites of new homes, and incorporation of the elderly and mothers with AIDS into the program in Honduras.
When I came to Haiti in 1987 to start the home, the number of dying children offered for our home was alarming. Most suffered from malnutrition, diarrhea, pneumonia, and a new sickness called HIV/AIDS. So in Haiti, we started a hospital as well as an orphanage.
The orphanage was named St. Helene and has had a population of about 400 children for 25 years. A subgroup are 35 children with severe disabilities who require lifelong care and supervision, who live in our Kay Christine home. Our pediatric hospital, St. Damien, had about 15,000 outpatients a year and 4,000 admissions a year. Throughout the years we have attended to over 500,000 children.
Seeing such great need in Haiti, and since our St. Damien Hospital was developing so fast, I attended medical school in 1998 and became a physician. After I studied medicine, things changed. We had more contacts, more openings for community involvement, and people counted on us more in Haiti through hellish social problems and upheavals. In 1999, I started roaming the slums to help out of a truck. I was helped by “ex-pequeños”, the name we give young adults who grew up at an NPH orphanage. It was beneficial to all of us because previously they had no work – 80% unemployment persists in Haiti.
Our team began to set up clinics and schools, so we created a second generation program led by ex-pequeños called the St. Luke Foundation. The Foundation was named for St. Luke because St. Luke was both an evangelist and a physician.
We also began having the team from Kay Christine come with us, to provide mobile therapy for disabled children in the slums. All of this mushroomed. The St. Luke program grew to 28 schools in very poor areas – we call them street schools. One street school is for blind and deaf children; another is a beautiful high school called Academy for Peace and Justice, funded mostly by Hollywood celebs; a third is a vocational school sponsored by the Mexican government, called St. Francis Vocational School.
Some of the clinics have turned into permanent centers – two are maternity centers and one is a new hospital called St. Mary Star of the Sea in Cite Soleil (Sun City).

The St. Luke Foundation also started a production center called “Francisville” which makes construction materials and essential foods. It was named for St. Francis of Assis and operates under the slogan, “Works of justice are works of peace”.
Then came twin disasters: the January 2010 earthquake and, only a few months later, the outbreak of cholera in October. Both NPH and St. Luke went into high gear:
• NPH expanded St. Damien to include programs destroyed in the capital when other hospitals fell: maternity, neonatology, surgical, and oncology programs.
• NPH also developed St. Germaine, a center for disabled children including production of prosthetics and rehab for child amputees from the earthquake.
• In addition, NPH set up a new orphanage and schools out of shipping containers for orphans and vulnerable children called “Father Wasson Angels of Light.”
•  St. Luke did disaster relief including setting up cholera camps (St. Philomena), and creating a hospital out of shipping containers for adult victims of the earthquake and other tragedies (St. Luke Hospital).
•  St. Luke also started building houses and youth centers for the homeless in a program called Force Lakay, which means “the strength of home.”
Thanks to your generous help and our strong Haitian team, we’ve been working day and night to build bridges of light and hope, of friendship and solidarity, traversing deep valleys of sorrow and hardship.

“Choose to persevere rather than to quit”
In memory of Fr. Wasson, and his commitment to children, at a moment when the earthquake dead were being recounted under high publicity, I imagined the many children of Haiti asking to be counted as the living…

“We are God’s children
The fruit of the earth
destined for greatness
we’ll show you our worth
Count us in as the living
The eager, the bold
Count us in as true friends whose proud stories are told
Count us in as the grateful for life and for bread
count us in we beg you
count on us, it’s our promise
Let’s begin!”

To view a slide show of our work visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmLlwo0PFNQ

Fr. Rick Frechette, CP
January 10, 2012

From the Financial Times (16th December 2011) – Father Rick: the children’s champion!

The American priest has spent 25 years building orphanages, hospitals and schools in Haiti’s slums

aFather Rick Frechette, an American priest with 25 years’ experience in Haiti, has just built 30 houses. They have sparkling Caribbean views, open porches and come in pink, lime-green and blue. Each house costs just $7,000, and they may soon have solar power. But these are not holiday villas, they are houses for the very poor – replacement shelters for the shaky shacks and trash-strewn rubble in Cité Soleil, the notorious slum at the edges of Port-au-Prince.

January 12 marks the two-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti, killing more than 220,000 people and displacing more than 1m, many of whom remain homeless.

“These houses are as earthquake-proof as we can get. They are a model for what we can do if we try,” says Father Rick, 58. He notes that community leaders in Cité Soleil, where his charitable organisation Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) Haiti has deep roots, were asked what kind of housing was needed most before the charity began the building project.

Many of the young Haitians now running the 28 NPH Haiti schools, medical clinics and programmes in the impoverished areas around Port-au-Prince grew up in St Helene’s, the original home for orphans founded by Father Rick.

“If you go out into the world and try to help people in need, you get a new family and a new home. This is my family now,” he says, reflecting on the thousands of children who have lived in his two homes, or were born or treated in St Damien’s, his state-of-the art paediatric hospital in the main NPH compound in the suburb of Tabarre.

Father Rick’s own living quarters consist of a simple upstairs hospital room at St Damien’s – furnished with a bed, a chair and a fan to combat the humid heat – where he retreats to write poetry and play the guitar (“I tinker”) late at night. He greets visitors downstairs in his small office on the ground floor; across the hall are outpatient waiting rooms that are packed with mothers and babies. It is only 7.30am but he has already offered mass in the whitewashed chapel on the NPH grounds, and traded in his robes for a black T-shirt and a silver cross tied around his neck with a leather shoelace.

Throughout the modern hospital, waiting areas are brightened by paintings by Cité Soleil artists and colourful curtains. Outside, neat pathways lined with palm trees lead to more buildings housing the rehabilitation centre, a school for the deaf and blind, and the bakery, carpentry and food production centre. Just 200 yards away, with its own gated entrance, is the outdoor courtyard of Father Rick’s second home for children, the Angels of Light, and nearby is another new school, “just three cement blocks away from completion”. Along the walkways, staffers and programme leaders of the charity, which has created 1,600 local jobs, enthusiastically greet Father Rick in Creole. “Everyone around here calls me Papa,” he says.

Father Rick grew up in a family of six children in West Hartford, Connecticut and joined the Passionist Order in 1974. In 1987 he moved to Haiti to start a branch of NPH, a Mexico-based home for orphaned and abandoned children in nine countries, created in 1954 by another American priest, Father William Wasson. “All NPH homes were founded on core principles of love, sharing and work. At 18, everyone gives a year of service,” says Father Rick. All who are capable get complete education, and many go on to university.

Father Rick’s first base in Haiti, in the mountains in Kenscoff, housed 500 orphaned children. From there he would ride a motorbike into the slums to assess needs, and recruit jobless teenagers for work programmes, new schools and medical clinics. “It was the time of [President Jean-Bertrand] Aristide,” he says. “There was an exodus of professionals from Haiti. There was one doctor per 15,000 people. In the US there was one per 500.”

In 1994, at the age of 40, Father Rick applied to medical school; he continued to run NPH Haiti throughout his training in Long Island, New York. “My classmates were 22 and had just graduated in chemistry and biology. I had a middle-aged mind,” he laughs. With new medical contacts, Father Rick eventually built a hospital, adding neonatal and oncology programmes and surgical facilities that turned St Damien’s into Haiti’s top paediatric medical centre.

After the earthquake of 2010, and the subsequent cholera outbreak, Father Rick turned his focus to the relief operation. “We lost staff members, volunteers and hundreds of colleagues but St Damien’s had minimal damage and we could offer strong help.” Because of poor construction and foundations, around 200,000 homes were destroyed across the country. The government says 10,000 homes have been built since, although many are transitional shelters. As orphaned and abandoned children began to appear at the gates in the aftermath of the quake there was an urgent need for more accommodation at St Damien’s.

“Our supplies arrived by steel shipping containers, 40 by 8 feet, so we cut out windows and built dorms,” Father Rick says, guiding a tour inside one of the dormitories, where bunks are arranged on each side. “With the aftershocks, the kids were safer in here, although the steel structures do rust.”

Behind the two hospitals, a gravel parking area leads to a modern warehouse building: the cholera camp. Inside, 150 sufferers are attached to IVs in neat rows of hospital beds. “The excellent Haitian team is reinforced by outside medical groups including the Mayo Clinic,” says Father Rick, “Many doctors have travelled down here with their teams to volunteer.”

So far this year the cholera camp has treated 20,000 people, and its move from 12 relief tents to a sturdy iron-framed building with a concrete base and aluminium roofing is an example of what Father Rick can do with donations. “Most of this was built by small and large donors from around the world. They were hugely generous after the earthquake,” he says. “But Haiti’s fallen off the map with the media and there’s been a dramatic decline in donations,” he says. “Cholera has a death rate of 50 per cent. That means 10,000 people would have died without care here. And trauma surgeries are expensive. We’ve already had to start cutting back.”

Back in his office with its tinsel Christmas tree, Father Rick brightens at the prospect of adding solar panels on to the 30 new houses. “We could make the panels ourselves,” he says. “They would provide the first power to a Cité Soleil home and create new jobs.”

……………………………………………………………..

Favourite things

“This is my favourite passage of the Bible, from the Old Testament,” says Father Rick, opening his New American Bible to Isaiah, Chapter 11 and reading out a line. “But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse. And from its roots a bud shall blossom.” What do the words mean? “When you think you’re at the very end, at the rotten stump, in decay, something grows. You keep tending to the thing that seems dead or not working and, with your tending, something new and beautiful sprouts up.”

Father Rick also keeps a photograph of his mother in his Bible. Did she visit Haiti? “Oh, yes. She was here a number of times and was very proud. I’d been away from home for years but in 2009, when my mother was dying of cancer, I decided to go home for Christmas and supervise her pain management, as a doctor. And while I was there, the earthquake happened. When my mother saw it on television, she sent me back to Haiti. She said ‘I am just one person. This disaster affects thousands.’ She died five days later. She fully believed in our mission.”

Per consultare l’articolo: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a5aadbee-226c-11e1-923d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gvl5nqQt

The new modular bakery unit

Our experience in Haiti, having to fight  every day against death, misery and hunger, has pushed us to build projects  that give the Haitians the instruments to break the poverty chain, by training young men and women and creating jobs. Francisville, the New Work City, was founded with the intent of “helping Haitians help themselves” by providing them the tools for long term self-sustenance.  Francisville offers vocational labs and  production units: brick factory, workshop and carpentry lab, bakery (10,000 rolls per day), pasta production (1,000 kg of pasta per day), tailor (500 uniforms per month for the street schools), printing lab.

They create social business by reinvesting in the projects and creating self sustainability. The bakery at Francisville employs 2 teams of young bakers and succesfully provides bread for all the children and staff of our projects in Tabarre. Part of the production is sold to organizations and private citizens thus creating an income that allows the business to self sustain. A new  concept of modular, repeatable bakery  is being developed  by Fondazione Rava in many areas of Port au Prince and in the countryside (Fond au Blanc).  The modular bakery’s  compact size , its transportability, extremely good ratio costs/benefits  and  the possibility to add an onsite outlet to sell the products are the project’s  main features . The first such modular bakery, was  inaugurated in Fond de Blanc, on October8th 2011.

An outreach ultrasound course of the prestigious ISUOG at the NPFS Paediatric Hospital Saint Damien to make a difference in Obstetrics in Haiti and save thousands of lives

23-27th MAY 2011,
Paediatric Hospital NPFS Saint Damien, Tabarre – Haiti

The leading obstetrics and gynaecology specialists from the USA and Italy will train 16 Haitian physicians and midwives at the NPFS (Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs – NPH Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos) Saint Damien Hospital in Tabarre on 23-27th May 2011. The training will focus on ultrasound techniques which can help save the lives of mothers and children. This is the first outreach course run at St Damien Hospital by the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG), which aims to help reduce the neonatal and maternity death rate in the country – one of the highest in the world. Ultrasound is essential for the early diagnosis of high-risk pregnancies and related conditions. It is also a valuable tool for assisting labour – the most delicate stage of pregnancy for both mother and child – helping to avoid emergencies through improved planning. However, ultrasound is not currently included in training for gynaecologists and obstetricians in Haiti.

The ISUOG hands-on course will start with a first session 23-27th May as part of a program lasting 18 months. The participants will be doctors and midwives from several maternity clinics in Haiti and from NPFS Saint Damien Hospital in Tabarre, where a High Risk Maternity Ward, set up by Francesca Rava – N.P.H. Italia Foundation, has been running since February 2010. The Foundation has funded the project and coordinated the work of more than 60 professional volunteers from Italy, including Professor Enrico Ferrazzi, also a trainer in the course.

This relevant scientific event will be officially inaugurated on Tuesday 24th at 4.30 p.m. in the presence of the Haitian Minister of Health and foreign authorities. They will be welcomed by the playing of the national anthems of Haiti, USA and Italy, by Father Richard Frechette, director of NPH Haiti since 1988, Dr Jean Edgar Aupont (Head of Maternity Department at Saint Damien), Dr Alfred Abuhamad (Chairman ISUOG Outreach Program).
The course is organized by ISUOG and Francesca Rava – NPH Italia Foundation, with General Electric’s technical partnership. Educational materials have been printed at the imprimerie of Francisvil – Cite Metye, the NPFS training professional centre nearby the Hospital.
The Saint Damien is the premier paediatric hospital in Haiti and the only admission-free facility on the island, serving 30,000 children a year whose health care needs could not be met elsewhere in the country.

Happy Easter from Francesca Rava Foundation, Father Rick and the NPH children

Dear friends,

we send our warmest greetings with the words of Father Rick Frechette priest and doctor at the forefront, for 23 years Director of NPH Haiti and the faces of the children of NPH homes in Latin America!

Click on the following link to watch Father Rick’s Easter message.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nphinternational?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/WbPew-u_cho

A ring to save a young life

Vhernier in favour of Fondazione Francesca Rava – N.P.H. Italia Onlus for the kids of Haiti

Vhernier the italian jewller by passion, that was founded in Valenza in 1984, created the Piroutte ring limited edition, to support the work of Francesca Rava Foundation to help the children of Haiti.

The purchase of the ring will enable a child to receive surgery at the N.P.H. Saint Damien Hospital, the only admission free children’s hospital in the extremely poor country of Haiti. This ring, symbolizing loyalty and love for others, has a very practical meaning: those who wear it join us in saving the life of a Haitian child who can receive care and hope.

Opening of the exhibition Haiti by Stefano Guindani

The exhibition HAITI by the photographer Stefano Guindani was inaugurated in New York on February 16. It is dedicated to the children of this devastated country, in favour of Francesca Rava – NPH Italy Foundation that will be receiving a part of the proceeds of the sale of photos and photo books.

The black and white images of Haiti destroyed yet full of hope, will dominate the 14th floor of the Canoe Studio, in the West Side of Manhattan until the end of March (601 West 26th Street, Suite 1465 New York, NY 10001 ph.2129249020 ext .110).
Hundreds of people have gathered at Canoe Studio for the opening of the exhibition: many

Mariavittoria Rava President of Francesca Rava USA Foundation

 

Italians as well as journalists and New Yorkers. The testimony of Mariavittoria Rava, president of the Foundation, was very touching. She flew to New York from London with a few volunteers including Jeryl and Francesca, to show her undying support to the work of Father Rick, director of NPH Haiti. In this occasion Mariavittoria Rava  also announced the recent birth of Francesca Rava USA Foundation.

Francesca Turci and Stefano Guindani

Virginia Villari and Enzo Di Taranto

Guests who attended the event included representatives of DLA Piper law firm, that are helping pro bono the  Francesca Rava Foundation; 

Enzo di Taranto Senior Liaison Officer of the United Nations, Jaquile Daldin International Communications Specialist, Annie Ballirò responsible for charity initiatives for the Hard Road Cafè,  Ugo Cacciatori the famous creator and designer of jewelry worn by Madonna, Melissa Satta, and many more friends and friends of friends.

Melissa Satta and Stefano Guindani

Another Dead Man

For a few minutes he was just another dead man.
That was the easiest way for me.

For me?  Strange. 
He’s dead, and somehow the focus is on me.

It all happened so fast. I was in Cite Soleil
Waiting for Nebez, Raphael and Conan. We were about to meet with  the community leaders to make three community centers,  in three different parts of Cite Soleil, with cybercafé, adult education, clinic and housing. 

I was standing, lost in thought and planning, and some tough guys said to me
“You should stand somewhere else, Mon Pere.”

I didn’t pay attention to them. I am used to their tough ways.
“I will stand right here, thank you. I am waiting for someone.”

Suddenly, a car came down the road, six of the tough guys drew their guns and surrounded it, and the driver and the car were kidnapped.

I stood in disbelief. It had happened so fast. Suddenly again, another car, this one for a non profit organization, came down the road. I could see a white woman in the passenger seat and a Haitian driver. I saw them well.  I was standing right on the road.

Guns were drawn again. The white woman looked at me. I thought, “she sees me standing here, unafraid, as if I am part of this gang.” 

I shouted at the gunmen, “Back off!  Leave them alone!”
The driver burned rubber, and squealing tires drove over the curb. They aimed their guns to fire at the escaping vehicle, but they were looking me. No shot was fired.  Amaral said,
“Those people were lucky you were here. They didn’t shoot the car because of you.”

The tough guys, who I do not know, came to me and said, “Go stand somewhere else.”

Before I could even answer, a truck full of people heading to Cape Haitian came along. Guns were drawn again. The thieves took all the luggage, bags and packages.

It seems the car that got away a few minutes earlier told the police down the road what happened. Now the police were racing toward us, open fire, shooting left and right. They chased the thieves, who split up to run. When they split up, the population was no longer afraid of them, and large crowds chased them like lions chase a deer they were able to separate from the herd.

They were throwing stones to kill them. One thief ran in front of me, toward our St Patrick School. The crowd followed. The thief turned toward us to shoot at the people hurling stones.

Next to me was a man making pots. He heated old scraps of aluminium and melted them, then poured the molten metal into clay moulds. His children went to our St Patrick school. He was worried about them. He heard the shots.  He stood up from his pots and started to cross the street to reach his children. Just as the thief was turning  to fire his gun.

Three shots.

Two entered his belly. One whizzed by my ear. 
He was down on the ground. I ran to him, calling Nebez on the phone, who could not get into the area because of the stampedes of people running away.  I told him to find any way to make his way in, that there was a man down, and we had to rush him to our hospital.

Before I could finish any sentence, I could see he was dead.

Just another deadman.
It was easier that way.

Until I took our my holy oils, and anointed his forehead, still warm, and furrowed with concern for his children.

Until I anointed his hands, rough from the work he did  to provide for them, and stained with blood and clay.

He was just another deadman, I told myself, as his friends and fellow pot-makers came, sullen and shocked, calling out to him. “Jean Louis! Jean Louis!”

It was easier that way.

I led them in prayer. “Jean Louis, go to God. Follow the light, the blessed light. God, free him from confusion and doubt, from fear and worry, forgive him any sin. Let him find you, and let Yourself be found by him.”

Now he wasn’t quite just another deadman.
Not as I watched the grief of his friends, heard their laments,
Not as I was pierced by the wailing of his approaching wife.
Not as I watched the children he had set out to gather and protect, now gathered in front of their lifeless father, fully unprotected. Their braided hair, their school uniforms so clean, dad on the dirt, covered in blood, already ants and flies galore.

He wasn’t just another deadman at all,
as I walked with his friends who wanted to show me his unfinished pots, the tools he had put aside just minutes before, because he heard shooting and thought for his children.

No, he wasn’t at all just another deadman, as I went to his house to console his family, to sit quietly in the face of their grief, and to offer help to bury him.

Another prayer. Another blessing.  “Strength, faith, hope, love, may they be deep in you and with you.”

Why were my hands shaking?

Because Jean Louis is not just another dead man. He is my brother. And yours. And his death is our loss.

Please pray for Jean Louis and his family in this moment of anguish. I thank you for it.

Fr Rick Frechette CP
Port au Prince
February 21, 2011

January 12, 2011

Dear Friends

Today when I got up at 5 am, I deliberately put on all black clothes,
after a disturbed sleep last night where several times i was awakened by thousands of voices wailing and moaning,
which i knew were not really there.
A long hard day lay ahead.

It helped me, when I came down for coffee, to pray the Liturgy of the Hours for the Dead ( I hope it helped them too!)

For this first anniversary of our terrible natural disaster (which was not a Divine retribution),
I participated in four masses.
One at the place of the dead, for the dead.
One at the fallen Cathedral with the bishops and priests and people.
One at our own hospital for our own dead,and one at the Sacred Heart Parish for their dead.

If today we were only to remember the horror of the earthquake, none of us would have been able to get out of bed
from being heavy with sadness.

We would hardly have needed a special day to remember the earthquake.
It is in our face every day.
The broken buildings, the ragged tents, the hungry and homeless poor.

But today we remember so much more and we remember in a different way.
Instead of our private daily experiences of an earthquake ravaged country and people,
we remember it together.
We see and speak our sadness in order to hold each other up with arms and with hope.
To not allow anyone to fall in a chain of friendship and solidarity.

And we remember deeper and wider things.
We remember that sunrises always follow sunsets (no exception so far).
That tide out is always followed by tide in.
That old ones die and new ones are born.
That everything about natural life speaks to us of renewal and new birth.

And as for supernatural life, we believe that God enters directly into suffering to bring redemption.
That our walking woundedness, when coupled with generosity and sacrifice, becomes something else, something wonderful,
that make us overflow with light and life.

We remember these things also today, and not just the sadness, and we remember the wonderful international solidarity.
The heroic example of the Haitian people and the fact that God used our weakness over the past year to do great things.

I retired our chalice today, the way a ball club will retire the uniform of an extraordinary player.
The great chalice of 2010.
Every morning, simple wine was poured into that chalice,
the cup of sacrifice and salvation.
And it became something else,
a cup of life.

And our participation in the transformation is what made us able to do great things as wounded healers, for a whole long year.

Our Lord says,
Do you really think you can drink of the cup I must drink from?

We say: We will try, with your help, by God’s grace, we will try.

And we did.

Every single day from January 12, 2010 to January 12, 2011.
And it has made all the difference.

The chalice now will be a monument to a devastating year buoyed by steadfast faith,
the chalice of 2010, the year we learned that all the promised power of the cup of salvation is true power.

The new chalice, donated to the memory of Francesca Rava, our invisible God sister,
is ready to bring us again old mysteries ever new and we are eager for its blessings, starting tomorrow.

Thank you for your emails of support and sympathy today.
We will remember you as we drink from the sacred cup!

Fr. Rick Frechette
Jan 12 2011

Haiti: a prompt response to the earthquake emergency. 12 months of dedication working for the children in need.