Portfolio at NYU

Posted 07.04.05
Kreyol Sunday
In Brooklyn, a Haitian church goes the way of multilingual banking

By Gergana Koleva

Father Guy Sansaricq is seeing the last of his 11 o'clock congregation as they come to receive his personal blessings before bundling up and spilling out into the street, hemmed in by graying mounds of snow. A pat on the cheek here, a tender squeeze of the hand there, and his heartwarming smile seem to do more to make the parishioners stick around and try to engage him with chat and laughter than leave. But he can't be saying goodbye for too long because St. Jerome Church is preparing for another Mass, and his job is to help empty the building for the next wave of believers.

They have already started filling the pews where their brethren sat just minutes ago. To the unknowing eye, it looks as if two identical groups of churchgoers are simply taking turns, forced perhaps to do so by the limited capacity of the church. What's apparent, and what unites the two congregations in addition to their Roman Catholic faith, is their homeland, Haiti. What's invisible, and what divides them, is the languages of the old country and of the one they call home now.

"I speak both, but I prefer English," says Yasmine Jeudi, a 23-year-old Haitian-American on her way out of the church.

"No, no English," an elderly Haitian woman says with an apologetic smile on her way in, as she is approached by an English-speaking reporter. "Kreyol."

Then she joins her compatriots, a sea of expectant black and brown faces which Sansaricq says represent 65 percent of St. Jerome's 1,800 parishioners.

Many of them speak little English, some none at all. That's why Sunday in this church is a trilingual affair, an alternation of Creole, English, and Spanish Masses for all the people of the island of Hispaniola.

Located at Newkirk Avenue and 29th Street in Brooklyn, St. Jerome Church is in the heart of Flatbush, the New York neighborhood known as Little Haiti. According to the 2000 census, Brooklyn itself is home to 61,267, or 64 percent, of New York's 95,580 Haitian immigrants. But that estimate does not reflect the growth in numbers over the last five years, or the influx of illegal immigrants along with the legal ones.

"There are more Haitians in Brooklyn than there are in Port-au-Prince," says Robert McNamara, an archivist at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. In Sansaricq's estimate, and in that of St. Jerome's Deacon Magloire Marcel, most Haitians -- regardless of where they live -- are Catholic, although some worship other deities.

"Protestants badmouth us all the time," says Sansaricq with an amused glimmer in his eyes, as if to say that religious slander is just another name for adolescent name-calling. He has skin the color of caramel and a head of dense, wavy white hair so neatly cropped that his appearance belies his age by at least a decade, making him a youthful 54. Back in Haiti, he says, the Protestants are the bigger proselytizers, always preaching against the Catholics. "They tell people we are Babylon," he says, laughing.

Marcel is a tad graver.

"We have a mission how to convert people," he says. At six two, he cuts an impressive figure. His golden-green frock strikes a deep contrast with his rich dark complexion, black hair and enormous spectacles, as he walks about the aisles with an air of omniscient benevolence. He explains that occasionally he comes across some among his parishioners who believe in Vodou. They are usually people who have just arrived from Haiti and haven't converted yet. Soon enough, they want to get rid of the old religion, but fear that if they give it up the Vodou gods may punish them.

"Once a year during Lent we hold a retreat and we ask people to bring their stuff so we can burn it," Marcel says, referring to Vodou objects of worship such as batons, rocks, amulets and live snakes. However, he says that no more than one or two people dare discard the totems.

"Vodou was born as a religion of resistance," says Sansaricq, who, in addition to being the pastor of St. Jerome and the director of the National Center of the Haitian Apostolate in Brooklyn, takes obvious pleasure in recounting the history of his native Haiti. Although he left his hometown Jeremie as a teenager in 1961 and spent seven years studying philosophy and theology in Canada before coming to the United States, he retains a firm connection with Haiti. Of his ancestors' tribal religion so often associated with sorcery and black magic, he explains: "It is not that different from Greek mythology. Vodou practitioners believe in one great deity, Bondye, who is the equivalent of the Greek god Jupiter. Like Jupiter, Bondye is slow to respond, that's why he has all these other sub-gods to run the show. People are wrong to think that Vodou has many gods."

As if to confirm Sansaricq's rationalization that Vodou is not incompatible with Catholicism, minutes into the service the all-Haitian choir starts singing "Gloria," one of Kreyol Mass's most joyous songs. "Viv Bondye...Viv Papa," goes the refrain as the singers sway from side to side, the scope of their movements looking unnaturally restrained. The music, a slowed down mix of Haitian compas and Dominican merengue, is so contagious that one instinctively knows they want to tap their feet and do more with their hands than keep them open in anticipation of the Lord's blessings.

"Singing is praying twice," says Chimene Gillis, the director of the choir. She says its 33 members meet twice a week because "singing is a big part of Haiti."

"Black people from Haiti have a lot of energy. That's why the songs in Kreyol Mass are more and they're longer," adds Marcel.

Sansaricq, who has now removed his pastoral regalia and taken a back stage after the 11 o'clock English Mass, looks sedate and thoughtful, as if after twelve years of service his own knowledge of Catholic rites and Haitian lore is weighing him down. But when he preaches, his body seems to soar off the floor as his hands rise, dip and spread, finally resting on the head of an imaginary sinner.

"Repent and expose yourself to Jesus -- despite the snow outside," he urges his congregation at once solemnly and cheerily a week earlier, on a Sunday so heavy with snow that only forty members of his usual 200-plus congregation have come out. Because of the inclement weather he has decided that Spanish Mass, which normally begins at 10:30a.m. in a part of St. Jerome Parish known as the Lower Church, must be fused with the one in English.

That's when Saul Flores, a 14-year-old cross-bearer from Salvador who leads the pastoral procession at Spanish Mass, makes a guest appearance on the bilingual Christian service. He is followed by Harold Morris, a 63-year-old volunteer lector from Trinidad, who stands side by side a Puerto Rican man, the two taking turns reading in English and interpreting in Spanish passages from the Catholic missal. When the service is over, Haitian and Hispanic worshipers shake hands and send each other away with the worldliest blessing:

"May the peace be with you," say one group.

"Paz de Cristo," respond the other.

"Donne-nous la paix,"-- "give us peace" -- add their blessings a week later the Kreyol faithful.


	Untitled (Les Stone/ ZUMA Press)