Update: St. John Bosc

from: http://www.speakeasy.org/~peterc/haiti/lost.htm - good links

http://www.speakeasy.org/~peterc/haiti/haiti.htm -
articles by Peter Costantini ca 1995

bibliography: http://www.speakeasy.org/~peterc/haiti/bibliog.htm

In the poor Port-au-Prince neighborhood of La Saline stand the ruins of a yellow and white cinder-block church. The roof is gone and the walls are blackened here and there with soot. The gates are chained shut. Spelled out on them in wrought iron is the Latin inscription: "Da mihi animas, caetera tolle" ("Give me the souls, take the rest").

In this church on September 11, 1988, thousands of faithful gathered to hear a mesmerizing young priest who spoke out for Haiti's poor majority against the military dictatorship of General Prosper Avril. As Jean-Bertrand Aristide said mass, a gang of Tontons Macoute (Bogeymen), the death squads tied to the military, broke down the gates and swarmed in with machetes and guns. They began slaughtering worshippers and piling bodies outside the church. When they were done, they threw the bodies inside and set St. Jean Bosco on fire.

According to Ron Voss, an American former priest who has worked in Haiti since 1980, the Macoutes stabbed a pregnant woman, who was brought to a hospital. Soldiers came to the maternity ward where she had been taken, and made all the women lift their robes so they could check for wounds. But the woman had already been taken to another hospital clandestinely. The baby was wounded but survived. The mother named it "Hope."

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