“If a sister or brother is poorly clothed and lacking in food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, be warm and well feed, without giving them things needed for the body, what good is that? So faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

James 2:15-17

History of Cité-Soleil

The history of Cité-Soleil begins under the presidency of François Duvalier. On the night of December 27, 1967, fire broke out in the slum of La Saline, the inhabitants were driven out "manu militari" by the police because the State wanted to transform the area into a port and industrial land. At that time, the Salesians of Don Bosco assumed parish responsibility for St Joseph's Church and the chapels in this popular area. That night of December 27, 1967, one of them, a Haitian priest from Jacmel, Father Michel Arthur VOLEL, united in the suffering of this population driven out by the fire. At their head, he advances towards an uninhabited marshy area because it is uninhabitable, telling them: "Bondye ap ba nou kote pou nou rete!" (God will give us where to live). People will call it "Brooklyn". The president authorized him to build small houses in this place close to "Cité-Simone" (named after François Duvalier's wife) and which would become "Cité-Soleil". Brooklyn will be one of his neighborhoods.

From the 1960s to the 2020s, the Salesians, and especially Fr VOLEL, will do tremendous work in Cité-Soleil, both socially, humanly and spiritually, with many schools. Other priests and nuns will also work without counting, the daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, the daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesians), Father Tom Hagan and many more.

Initially a working-class and peaceful district, Cité-Soleil gradually became shanty-town under the deleterious influence of corrupt politicians and influential businessmen who use this “voting pool” according to their needs by playing on the misery of young men. They give them arms and ammunition, thus forming rival gangs where violence most often reigns during election periods, depriving the common people of their freedom to enter and leave to "seek life" on a daily basis.

Today, Cité-Soleil is a lawless area, where the police are not welcome. The "leaders" of each zone rule their laws, where it is often the law of the strongest that prevails. All are unhappy, leaders and people alike, because they know that hidden hands are using them for political ends. Cité-Soleil has descended into the darkness of hell in recent years, without however the flame of hope being extinguished in the hearts of its inhabitants, of its children who continue to seek the meaning of their life in the churches, at the foot of the cross, because it is the Cross they carry by stumbling every day without anyone being moved by it.