Easter Sunday 2020 was observed in Haiti in circumstances profoundly different from any previous year, with COVID precautions limiting or preventing the large church gatherings that normally marked the most important day in the Christian calendar. Yet faith remained a central resource for Haitians navigating a year of compounding crises, and religious communities found creative ways to maintain connection and spiritual practice despite the pandemic’s constraints.
The availability of the Bible and other religious texts in Haitian Creole, the product of decades of translation work by religious organizations, made it possible for millions of Haitians to engage with scripture in their mother tongue rather than in the French that had historically dominated official church life. The Creole Bible had played an important role in democratizing religious participation, making scripture accessible to the majority of Haitians who read Creole but not French.
Radio broadcasts of religious services reached communities where in-person gathering was impossible or unsafe, maintaining a form of communal worship across physical distance. Haitian radio stations dedicated to religious programming had long been important community institutions; during the pandemic they became even more central to the spiritual lives of their audiences.
Religious leaders across denominations used the Easter period to address the specific anxieties and griefs that their congregations were experiencing — not just the theological themes of the season but the immediate pastoral reality of a community facing illness, economic hardship, and social disruption simultaneously. The care provided by religious communities for their members during the pandemic period was one of the less visible but enormously important forms of resilience that sustained Haitian society through an extraordinary year.