St. Mary's Parish Welcomes St. Joseph's Parish, Carcasse, Haiti

Twinning Parish Project: St. Mary's Parish, Barnesville MD and St. Joseph's Parish, Carcasse, Haiti! This website is dedicated to updating St. Mary's parishioners about St. Joseph's and our progress in helping our wonderful twin parish.

During the winter of 2008, fellow St. Mary's parishioner Jack Reid visited St. Joseph's Carcasse, Haiti and met with the Pastor,  Father Verdieu Jossaint, and his parish. With this visit, we were all blessed by the beginning of the "twinning" of St. Mary's in Barnesville MD (see www.stmaryonline.com) with St. Joseph's Carcasse, Haiti.

Since then, we have built a school (the first), helped bring four medical missions to Carcasse (the first doctors ever there), and helped supply the Pastor with internet service and a vehicle as he ministers to his 10,000 parishioners along a wide and mountainous rural landscape.

THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO DO!

NEW SCHOOL BUILT BY "TWINNING" EFFORT OF ST MARY'S!

This is the first school in Carcasse and we at St. Mary's are so happy we could help make this dream happen!

Students in the new school in Carcasse with St. Mary's parishioners Jack Reid and Tony Chmelik.





St. Joseph's parish claims ten thousand people. It is located in Carcasse, a very rural area of Haiti, and also covers the villages of Bazaren, Cap Afou, and Bigarose. A Haiti-French dialect is spoken by most and Father Verdieu Jossaint also speaks standard French. 

The parish is very rural and very poor. The people in Carcasse have no internet or phone service (which means no normal communications with the outside world). They are faced with e-coli infected water, almost no electricity, no secondary school and serious environmental issues. Help is needed in many areas - help that St. Mary's can realistically give if enough parishioners get involved.

The people are warm, hospitable and gracious. 

Here is Father Verdieu with a friend who has acted as translator for Jack Reid.