Word: salesians
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Born in the isolated fishing village of Port Salut, Aristide moved with his widowed mother to the capital and was educated by Salesian priests, a group dedicated to charity and spiritual instruction for poor and orphaned children. Even before his ordination in 1982, he began writing protest songs about the exploitation of the poor. Sent to Israel and Canada to study the Bible and psychology, he returned to Haiti in 1985, just in time to participate in the nonviolent anti-Duvalier movement. After Duvalier's ouster, Aristide continued to be a persistent critic of the government and an outspoken proponent...
Aristide's polemical preaching led to his expulsion from the Salesian order in 1988. While he technically remains a priest, Aristide is forbidden to say Mass. He has indicated he will leave the priesthood to serve as Haiti's President...
Nothing had changed, except the birth of hope. Its harbinger is a frail, shy Salesian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A charismatic preacher of liberation theology, Aristide was spokesman for Ti Legliz -- the "Little Church" of the slums, in contrast to the grand official church of Haiti's temporizing bishops and its French-speaking "mulatto elite." Yet even Aristide ends as one more victim of Haiti's misery. Army goons burn his church, murdering many of his congregants, and Aristide eventually becomes a priest sans pulpit when the Salesians dismiss him for being too political...
...directive came not from the Haitian government but from Father Aristide's superiors in the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco, the 129-year- old religious order popularly known as the Salesians. Upset by Aristide's strident political activism, they commanded him to leave his homeland by the same date, Oct. 17, and to go into exile in Canada. Last week, as that date passed, it was clear that Aristide was not about to leave...
Once word of the Salesians' directive was out, impoverished Haitians by the thousands surged through the streets, threatening to set fire to Port-au- Prince and marching to the airport to block the rumored departure of the beloved priest. Though the Vatican has been blamed for demanding Aristide's departure, Salesian officials in Rome insist that the Holy See was not involved. Instead, the decision came from within their order. "We advised Aristide time and time again to tone down his sermons," explains Belgian priest Luc Van Looy, a top-ranking Salesian. Van Looy explains that the Salesians are concerned...