Vodou communities across Haiti organized special healing ceremonies in 2023 that addressed the collective trauma of a nation experiencing what practitioners and priests described as a spiritual crisis alongside its political, security, and humanitarian crises. The ceremonies invoked the lwa — particularly those associated with healing, justice, and community protection — in rituals that brought community members together in shared spiritual practice at a moment when almost every other form of collective institution was failing.
In oufò across Port-au-Prince and in rural communities throughout the country, houngan and mambo led ceremonies that named the violence, the corruption, and the suffering of recent years in spiritual terms and called for divine intervention and community renewal. The liturgical engagement with political and social reality was consistent with Vodou’s historical role as a space for processing collective experience and organizing collective response.
Vodou communities also provided practical support alongside spiritual ministry. The networks of mutual aid that oufò maintained among their members were activated during the crisis to support families who had lost income or homes to gang violence. The tradition of community solidarity embedded in Vodou practice proved adaptable to the specific demands of 2023’s emergencies.
Cultural scholars who had been studying Vodou’s social role during Haiti’s crisis noted that the religion’s decentralized, community-rooted structure made it particularly resilient to the institutional collapse affecting more formal organizations. Unlike state institutions or NGOs that depended on physical infrastructure and operating budgets, oufò could function wherever their communities were — including in displacement sites and under gang-controlled conditions — as long as the community itself survived.