A big hat tip to the Deacon’s Bench for pointing out this video of Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s recent video to Haiti and its ravaged cathedral. As co-chair of the board of directors for Catholic Relief Services, Dolan went to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the quake and attended the funeral of Haiti’s own Archbishop Serge Miot. He returned earlier this month to get a look at the progress being made in the country nine months later.
Here he gets a very sobering tour of the cathedral ruins: [video:http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=5-EKh_mbQqk&feature=related 635×355]
The video’s music is particularly haunting: Canon in D is usually overplayed at weddings; here it becomes a funeral march. Standing in the ruins, Dolan reflects on his first visit to Haiti:
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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[T]he streets and collapsed buildings were still filled with the dead and dying. In the midst of that tragedy, Dolan said he looked up at the huge cross, still standing intact by the Cathedral, and a thought came to him.
“I’m hearing people crying. I’m hearing people moaning,” he recalled. “You’re tempted to say where is God in all of this? And I said to myself, ‘He is here. This is Good Friday, this is Calvary. This is Jesus again on his cross, suffering with and for his people. And what will come from this is rebirth, renewal, rebuilding.’ And indeed it is.”
For more on Archbishop Dolan’s visit to Haiti, check out the Odyssey Network’s “Faith in Action: Haiti” series beginning here.