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South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Decem­ber 4, 2006

Far away are the throngs of fol­low­ers from Haiti’s Lavalas polit­i­cal party who flock to Jean-Juste’s side when he mean­ders through the streets of Miami’s Lit­tle Haiti neigh­bor­hood, and the chants of admi­ra­tion he hears when he addresses Creole-speaking supporters.

“This is where I come to pray every day,” he says, sit­ting incon­spic­u­ously in an empty church as soft rays of light beam through stained glass win­dows. “When they close at night, I park my car and pray for an hour or hour and a half.”

These days the 60-year-old priest has much to pray about, includ­ing his future as a priest.

Hait­ian offi­cials released Jean-Juste from prison almost a year ago so he could obtain can­cer treat­ment. He sur­vived months of chemother­apy, but still bat­tles the result­ing low white cell count. He longs to return to his con­gre­ga­tion in Port-au-Prince, but church offi­cials there sus­pended him from pub­licly per­form­ing litur­gi­cal rites.

Jean-Juste has been con­va­lesc­ing at his sister’s home in Fort Laud­erdale. He has found life in Broward County much dif­fer­ent from Miami-Dade County, where in the 1970s he earned his inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tion as a bois­ter­ous advo­cate for Hait­ian refugees. Broward’s Hait­ian pop­u­la­tion is more sub­dued, less polit­i­cally orga­nized. Yet the priest is at peace and plans to orga­nize Haitians in Broward County to address socio-economic issues that affect their lives.

“When I’m here, many peo­ple don’t know where I am,” he said. “If I’m in Miami, for­get it. They won’t let me sleep. Here, they’re more reserved.”

Jean-Juste is a staunch sup­porter of ex-Haitian Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, the con­tro­ver­sial for­mer Catholic priest who was ousted from Haiti dur­ing a vio­lent 2004 rebel­lion. Aris­tide remains exiled in South Africa.

In 2005, Hait­ian author­i­ties, under the lead­er­ship of for­mer U.S.-backed Interim Prime Min­is­ter Ger­ard Latortue, arrested Jean-Juste as a sus­pect in the mur­der of promi­nent jour­nal­ist and poet Jacques Roche. Human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions, mem­bers of the U.S. Con­gres­sional Black Cau­cus and inter­na­tional activists con­demned the arrest, Jean-Juste’s sec­ond under the interim government.

Last Decem­ber, more than 1,000 of Jean-Juste’s sup­port­ers marched on the streets of Miami, com­par­ing the priest to the Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and demand­ing his release.

“The hos­pi­tal has been a min­istry for me. Prison has been a min­istry for me,” he said. “What­ever con­di­tion I’m in, I make it into a min­istry. And my prayers and min­istry tran­scend all hardship.”

But not all Haitians see Jean-Juste as tak­ing the right path.

Patrick Jabouin, a Haitian-American real estate agent and polit­i­cal activist in Sun­rise, said he has become a sym­bol of coura­geous lead­er­ship, but not every­one agrees with his approach.

“I respect him as a leader, as far as his courage,” Jabouin said. “He’s try­ing to uplift the masses and try­ing to help peo­ple. But my con­cen­tra­tion is uplift­ing and try­ing to get Haitians to par­tic­i­pate in the process here.”

Phito Thelot, pres­i­dent of the Haitian-American Foun­da­tion Inter­na­tional in Del­ray Beach, doesn’t like the way Jean-Juste has mixed reli­gion and politics.

“Many times I hear him over the radio sta­tion talk­ing and he’s not let­ting peo­ple know they’re broth­ers, but he sounds like they are ene­mies to each other,” Thelot said. “He has a choice to be a politi­cian or be a reli­gious man. But you can’t use the church for politics.”

While Jean-Juste sat in prison, mem­bers of the Lavalas party marched in the streets of Port-au-Prince, call­ing for him to be the next pres­i­dent of the impov­er­ished country.

Port-au-Prince Catholic Arch­bishop Joseph Serge Miot sus­pended him from serv­ing in the Catholic Church for seek­ing polit­i­cal office as a priest, accord­ing to the Rev. Jean Pierre, direc­tor of Eth­nic Min­istries for the Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Miami.

Jean-Juste said in a recent inter­view that he had no inten­tion of run­ning for office. He has filed an appeal with Catholic offi­cials in Rome and is wait­ing for a response from Pope Bene­dict XVI.

Jean-Juste said he would like to serve at churches in South Florida while wait­ing for the Pope’s deci­sion. He said Miami Arch­bishop John C. Faval­ora vis­ited him in Fort Laud­erdale and offered to help.

But Pierre, speak­ing on behalf of the Arch­bishop, said: “Arch­bishop Faval­ora has said he would not go against the deci­sion made in Port-au-Prince.”

“There’s noth­ing any­body can do here,” Pierre said. “But [Faval­ora] is open to doing what­ever he can to help Father Jean-Juste.”

Mean­while, Jean-Juste remains a hero to many Haitians who remem­ber when he ran the Hait­ian Refugee Cen­ter in Lit­tle Haiti and lay down in front of a bus to stop immi­gra­tion offi­cials from dri­ving away with Hait­ian refugees.

“The com­mu­nity has totally accepted Father Jean-Juste as a vic­tim of the Latortue gov­ern­ment, and it’s obvi­ous that his impris­on­ment was a way to pre­vent him from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the polit­i­cal life of Haiti,” said Jean-Robert Lafor­tune of the Haitian-American Grass­roots Coali­tion in Miami. Latortue, now a Boca Raton retiree, has denied such charges.

While wait­ing on the church and the Hait­ian author­i­ties to deter­mine his fate, Jean-Juste keeps busy. Dressed in the black garb of a priest, he recently com­forted the Haitian-American mother of Bryan Pata, a slain Uni­ver­sity of Miami foot­ball player. He also pick­eted with Hait­ian taxi dri­vers in Miami and over the months has par­tic­i­pated in Catholic ser­vices in New York and San Francisco.

“Being a priest has been my whole life,” he said while sit­ting in the Wilton Manors church pew. “I have a great love for God and his peo­ple and I try to live the gospel.”