Waf Jeremie is a slum on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, built twenty years ago on a municipal landfill, by the work of desperate people who wanted to be the first to have access to the carts that were dumping waste. On paper welcomes 70,000 people,  actually is three times as much. The State is not here. Officially, then, even these people exist: no one cares for them, their desire for freedom, hope and beauty.

When I arrived nearly seven years ago, I introduced myself to the Archbishop Miot asking how I could serve Christ and the Church. He request me to come into this neighborhood. I was very puzzled by the request: where do I begin? We know that this is one of the most dangerous places in the capital, where armed gangs reign supreme ... Just the fact that I'm white I did see the idea as crazy. The Archbishop surprises me by saying: "Go to Waf Jeremie and take Christ and Church to my people."

This has blown away all the uncertainty. It did not fix the problem (we whites continued to not be able to enter), but I put to the task of my vocation. The issue became a challenge on the essentials, "bring Christ and the Church." For the missionary this is the task. This is for everyone, but specifically for those who are chosen by Christ to bring his embrace to the men of whole the world. I understood then that the words of the Archbishop were the most beautiful and true could happen to me in life. It was the Church that I was sending to proclaim Christ to those who did not even exist for his own government.

 
    Each situation forces us to say yes. And the chance that the archbishop has offered me has opened up to me and another sister a chance to get in this neighborhood. Not even the color of my skin, at that point, was no longer a problem: if I have a warrant so great - I said - the good Lord will show us the way. It took three months. Every morning we arrived at the entrance of the slum and would not let us enter. Gradually, we tried to relate with the locals. Without claiming that he understood why we were there, but simply with the docility of those who are obedient to a drawing of an Other. "This mission is not mine, I was given," he said. And I prayed to Our Lady to guide our steps.

    Then, one day, a typhoon swept away part of shacks and sweeps away seven infants and an elderly patient. People ask me for help. But what can I do? Just being next to a woman who had lost her child, asking the good Lord that He used my humanity to embrace her and her pain. Having spent a day looking in the mud people opened us the doors. People no longer felt abandoned. From that day the gates were opened for us and for our friends who came to share this journey.

    Entering, we realized that there was need of everything. The houses are shacks without electricity, water, sewer ... There lives a mass of people trying to arrive at night, surrounded by a despair which is especially due to perceive abandon/neglect, the inability to change the strenuous circumstances in which they live.

     I said to myself: how do I answer? Thanks to his friendship with a doctor from Lombardia, Italy, Dr. Gianfranco Dedivitiis, we decided to open a pediatric clinic in a former coal yard. One day, while I'm painting the walls, comes a young man who takes from my hand the brush and goes on to paint. I say, "Better that you go, I have no money to pay you." But he replies: "If you do it for my country I can do that too." His name is Lucien, he is joined by his brother Alex, then James and others ... well, then, quickly a small group of young people is formed around me.

In knees with Haiti

    Lucien is no longer with us, he was brutally killed by those in the slums that does not wish us well and who wanted to punish him for the choice of putting his energies into something beautiful. He was my right arm, a reference point for the boys. He was 40 years. Before his slaughtered corpse on the road, the first reaction was to say: "It's all over, is really too bad." But the only true hypothesis is that the life has a good destiny in store for each one. After the first moment of loss, I fell on my knees. I called the nuncio, I told him what had happened. Not asking for a solution, but I needed to be confirmed that his death was not the last word.

    Yes, because life is a continual challenge. So it was also the earthquake, devastating, on/in January 12, 2010: 300,000 deaths, 75% of the city center was collapsed, 17 of 18 ministries destroyed ... Enormous the losses also for the Church, as much in people (starting with the bishop) as in the structures (the cathedral, many parishes, three seminaries, Catholic schools, radio ...). Haiti is on its knees and we with Haiti.  At that time I was in Italy to accompany my mother to his fate: he had been diagnosed three weeks of life and died on Christmas Eve. The day of the earthquake I try to get in touch with my boys. In vain. Then I decided to collaborate with emergency intervention promoted by the Lombardia Region for Haiti. Upon my arrival, I meet a destroyed city: people who wandered in shock, looking for friends and relatives ... I arrive there with the pain of heart for the death of my mother, to which a new suffering is added for what I see around me. Difficult if not impossible, to find a foothold to start over.

    At Waf Jeremie only a few houses have fallen, but the huts are standing. Everywhere, however, parents, wives, husbands hope that their loved ones are still alive somewhere, somehow ... But the outpatient hospital has collapsed. Lucien arrives with a broken leg; the boys are all doing well. Seeing what has happened, I realize that I can not do anything. It takes someone very capable, with more possibilities. "I am not the named person" I say. I almost forgot why I was there: the mandate of the archbishop, "bring Christ and the Church." I may not be useful professionally, but then I feel that I am called to bring something that no one else can bring.

     While I'm thinking of these things, comes the mother of a boy, crying and chanting a dirge local. "Now I know that God loves us - he says in a low voice - and that has not  abandoned us." For me it was like a slap: just seen me there, that she felt loved by God. Knowing that I had not with me million to redo everything. Yet, the history of these years, as she saw in the outpatients working with children, she understood the essential: she has linked our story with God's mercy for her.

     Then once more I sense that this is not about solving problems, but sharing the difficulty of living. So we decide to leave, but where? The good Lord gives us a sign: we are contacted by an Italian, head of an NGO, which provides me with the reconstruction of a laboratory. I do not know what to do: the initiative is far from simple. And then, I wonder, who will refer it on? The archbishop was died, I had no immediate reference with which to confront. With satellite phone I can call Rome and I am told that such a proposal is just a sign and I read it as the reconfirmation of the task that the Lord is giving me.

So the workshop was rebuilt to become San Francisco Clinic: today is a five-room clinic, a pediatric clinic, with dental, nutritional activities and accompanying the woman during pregnancy and first aid. Next to it were raised a number of other initiatives to serve the people. In the months after the "Vilaj Italyen" was born, 122 little houses in which a thousand people are living: in the slum is an oasis of hope, to remind people that even the most dramatic situation is not never no way out. Because the last word on life and reality is that of Jesus, that two thousand years ago changed the course of history.

I have confirmed through a sign that God sent me. One day at the door of a shack I find written in black paint: "Verbum caro factum est /Word was made flesh." Read a sentence in Latin in the context of a slum in Haiti is the most unthinkable one can imagine. Seeking a man who lives in the house and I ask him about the phrase. He says he does not know exactly, but he said that when he was a child his father used to say a long prayer in an unknown language. He remembers only that sentence. Because his father had said: "Whatever happens to you in life there is always a point where you can share. And it is this."

 
     The day of the earthquake, from there, you could see the cathedral collapsed. And the man told me: "I saw only rubble, people screaming. Everything around me seemed dead. Watching my children and thinking about what I could tell them to give hope, I was reminded of that phrase of the prayer. I took the paint and I have written on the door, because every morning I could remember it. " This person probably was not even Catholic. But, for his experience with his father, he was certain that the phrase replied to the promise in his heart. For me it was a grace. For months I started my day by going to that door every morning to recite the Angelus.
Currently we are the only ones who have reconstructed something in Haiti. We received several journalists and politicians attracted from our work. Well, what makes the difference? The Christ does, not me. What is happening here is the work of Another: saying yes has allowed to Christ to change the reality. Because it has changed us. We began to see reality not as a problem to solve, but starting from the gaze of Christ over all of us. In doing so, the reality changes, and change you and your life becomes really beautiful. Looking at what we do, I hope you do not say, "How good is Sister Marcella," but: "Glory to God for what happened."

      Someone asked me: where does this "something extra" that your freedom? The answer is: it arises from the consciousness of own vocation. A vocation is not, primarily, be a nun, priest, doctor, but something to do with your personal relationship with Christ. The point is: I want to be grasped by Christ? We belong to a Church group, do so many things, but do not let ourselves be filled with Christ. Applies to me Sister: every day I can take back the "yes" said to twenty years. So it is for the husband who takes back hundred times a day the "yes" for ever that he told his wife before God: it does not necessarily mean that he betray his wife, simply he does not look more her like a "religious vocation" which is given. Be unfaithful to the vocation is to forget the fact that Christ has fully grasped and wants you all to itself. In contrast, the freedom to respond stems from the fact that you realize that your humanity is not defined by what you are, but an Other who loves you. I am Christ who loves me. If you are serious about this conviction, the circumstances are no longer a burden.

Marcella Catozza
Fraternità Francescana Missionaria
Haiti - Mar dei Caraibi