U.S. parish finds room in heart, wallet for priest's Haitian schools

Published: 2003-10-30

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) -- Four thousand miles from its home in South Pasadena, Calif., lies the heart of Holy Family Parish. You'll find it down narrow streets lined with tin-roofed shacks, inside dark and dank classrooms where children struggle to learn amid the chaos around them, behind high-walled gates and armed guards needed to keep out desperate thieves. Holy Family's heart belongs to the Caribbean country of Haiti, where the parish's Haiti mission has adopted the "Little Schools" started 35 years ago by Salesian Father Lawrence Bohnen to educate Haiti's poor. Holy Family helps provide education and daily meals to thousands of Haitian children who would have little access to either without the parish's help. "Father Bohnen's schools are important because there is no free education in Haiti," said Joseph Haronce, founder and director of the Little School of El Shaddai in La Saline, one of Haiti's largest slums. "All of the children are very poor, many without parents. The children are in desperate need of medical attention and good food."

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