PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The metropolitan archbishop of Haiti is speaking out following an Oct. 3 massacre by armed gang members in that nation’s central western region, an attack that killed at least 115 and displaced some 6,000. “Is there a plan to destroy the country?” said Archbishop Max Leroy Mésidor of Port-au-Prince, president of the Haitian Catholic bishops’ conference. Members of the Gran Grif de Savien gang stormed the town of Pont-Sondé during the early hours of Oct. 3. A local official later said that the death toll had topped 100 as the search for victims continued. The attack ranks as the worst in Haiti’s recent history, which has been plagued by multiple, sustained crises such as political instability, natural disasters, foreign intervention and international debt. “The country is completely sick” and its people “exhausted,” said Archbishop Mésidor in a widely circulated audio message released after the attack. (OSV News)
