Friday, February 12, 2010

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Archbishop of Port-au-Prince killed in Haiti quake By JAMEY KEATEN ~ Associated Press Writer: PARIS — Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, has been killed in the Haiti earthquake. He was 63. Missionaries at the archdiocese found his body crushed by rubble in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in western France. A seminary student was killed and two others were injured in the quake, according to the mission. The Saint Jacques order of missionary priests was officially founded in 1951 by the bishop of Gonaives, Haiti. While headquartered in France, it retains a strong presence in Haiti and traces its unofficial missionary activity to 1860. Born in Jeremie, Haiti, on Nov. 23, 1946, Miot was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1975. He was consecrated a bishop in 1997, and named deputy to the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, a title he held until being named archbishop himself in 2008. "He was a demanding, and understanding, priest," said the Rev. Michel Menard, also of the Saint Jacques mission, who met regularly with Miot in Haiti. "He was a man of great discretion and humility." "He was very close to his priests, very welcoming," and his door was always open to visitors, Menard said. Miot, a philosophy professor at the Port-au-Prince seminary, "would tell students that being a priest is not a profession, it is a mission," Menard told The Associated Press by phone from the Brittany town of Landivisiau. Miot founded an association to help poor families in Port-au-Prince. He also denounced the imprisonment of a priest, Gerard Jean-Just, who fought for human rights, and against corruption and in favor of the poor. Thursday, January 14, 2010