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Brief History and Overview St. Cecilia parish adopted Sacred Heart Parish in 1993 through the Parish Twinning Program of the Americas (PTPA). Our first visit to Thiotte, Haiti took place in 1995. Sacred Heart Parish, pictured above, did not exist prior to our twinning and was built in 1994 with the first of St. Cecilia's gifts to their sister parish. In Haiti, every parish has a number of chapels in the nearby communities that are served by the one priest of the parish. Originally the
Parish of Thiotte had 10 chapels that extended south to Anse-A-Pitres.
In 2005 the diocese of Jacmel made Anse-A-Pitres its own parish which
removed 3 of our chapels. However, in the area of Tête Source there
were so many new Catholics that the Diocese added 5 new chapels to the
Thiotte Parish in that area. Click here to
zoom in on our Sister Parish.
On our home page, in the right column, are a few of the chapels in our sister parish. The chapels serve as church on Sunday and schools during the
week. All the schools are overcrowded and in need of expansion.
One of our previous chapel/schools was made of palm fronds until 1998 when funds
collected from St. Cecilia
was sent to buy cement to
construct walls. Roof
construction
was
possible because of Dells Lumber,
who donated all of the
lumber, materials
and design for the roof.
A construction
team
then went to Thiotte
to help
Haitians finish
construction of the
roof in December, 1998. Our first medical mission took place in 1997. At that time St. Joseph Parish, Baraboo, WI also joined in supporting our sister parish, because Sacred Heart is so large and has so many needs. St. Joseph focuses on the medical needs of the parish. As more and more medical people participated in missions to Thiotte, eventually those missions gave birth to the ecumenical group called the Haiti Medical Mission of Wisconsin (HMMW). Over the years, our many visits to our sister
parish have produced many personal relationships. St. Cecilia members,
asked by Haitian families, have stood as godparents in baptisms and matrons
of honor in weddings. One family in Baraboo adopted three Haitian children
from Mother Teresa's in Port-Au-Prince as a result of a mission to Thiotte.
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