[News] Fr. Jean-Juste, spiritual leader of Haitian Americans, dies

Wed May 27 23:58:51 EDT 2009

Posted on Wed, May. 27, 2009
Fr. Jean-Juste, spiritual leader of Haitian Americans, dies

BY ELINOR J. BRECHER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
ebrecher at MiamiHerald.com
The spiritual and political leader of the Haitian community in South  
Florida died in Miami after suffering a stroke. He was 62.

Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, the Roman Catholic priest whose passionate,  
relentless, 30-year human-rights crusade on behalf of his fellow  
Haitians cast him as their spiritual and political leader in South  
Florida, has died.

Jean-Juste was a liberation theologist, controversial in both the  
United States and his homeland, who battled the unequal treatment of  
Haitian refugees in the federal courts, in Miami's streets and in the  
media.

He suffered a stroke recently, according to Ira Kurzban, the Miami  
attorney who represented Jean-Juste's Haitian Refugee Center in  
several lawsuits against the U.S. government, and died Wednesday  
evening at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He was 62.

His death apparently was unrelated to the leukemia that Jackson  
doctors treated three years ago.

''The Haitian-American community has lost a visionary and a central  
figure who helped to establish the Haitian community in South  
Florida,'' Kurzban said. ``They lost a. . .friend whose arms and heart  
were always open.''

Marliene Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, called  
Jean-Juste ``an icon, someone who gave himself wholely, selflessly to  
others without any need to''self-promote.

'He was the greatest champion of refugees' and immigrants' rights, and  
he showed that we, as a country, could do better in the way we treat  
people who leave their native land to come here.''

Bastien said that Jean-Juste ``goes all the way when it comes to  
defending the rights of the less fortunate. He fights with all his  
might in the pursuit of justice. He doesn't stop to eat.''

Jean-Juste was an unflinching supporter of ousted Haitian President  
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party. On learning of his  
death, Maryse Narcisse, a Lavalas leader and spokeswoman for Aristide  
-- who is in exile in South Africa -- said, ``This terrible, terrible  
news. A big loss for us.''

Jean-Juste's demands for Aristide's return after a 2004 violent  
revolution, and his attacks on government corruption, earned him two  
prison terms in Haiti.

Unafraid to confront anyone, including Church superiors in two  
countries, he was suspended by the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince --  
and prevented from having his own South Florida church by the  
Archdiocese of Miami.

Some admirers called him ''St. Maverick.'' He once said, ``The taste  
of freedom for somebody else is a great victory for me.''

Former Aristide government Prime Minister Yvon Neptune has known  
Jean-Juste since 1965. They exchanged notes from adjacent jail cells  
after both had been arrested by the interim government of Gerard  
Latortue.

Neptune remembered how Jean-Juste's passion for Haiti led him to  
return from Miami to work closely with Aristide's administrations.

''He's going to be missed a whole lot, and he's going to be remembered  
in a very positive way even by some of his detractors,'' Neptune said  
in Port-au-Prince. ``Especially. . .in the 1980s, he was very  
instrumental in having the U.S. government consider the case of the  
Haitian refugees. He was very much involved in social work not only in  
helping the Haitians solve their legal problems but in helping them in  
many ways.''

Born to an unmarried mother, Jean-Juste left Haiti in 1965 to study at  
a Canadian seminary.

He returned to Haiti briefly after ordination and worked in a remote  
parish. He left after refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to the  
government.

He spent time in New York then attended Northeastern University in  
Boston, where he earned a degree in civil engineering.

In 1971, Jean-Juste became the first Haitian ordained as a priest by  
the Catholic Church in the United States. The first Haitian ''boat  
people'' began arriving in Miami the following year.

Initially they were treated the same as other refugees, but that began  
to change as their numbers grew and government policy shifted.

By 1978, Jean-Juste was running the Haitian Refugee Center in Liberty  
City -- and calling U.S. immigration policy toward Haitians ``our  
Holocaust.''

He upset Church officials by conducting funeral services for  
non-Catholic Haitians who drowned at sea, picketing the Archdiocese of  
Miami, and calling then-Archbishop Edward McCarthy a racist.

For Jean-Juste, there was only one priority: better treatment for the  
poor and hopeless.

''Haitian people had no rights in Haiti and they have no rights  
here,'' he told The Miami Herald in 1980. ``They are starving, they  
are being separated from their families, they cannot work.''

That year, the Mariel boatlift brought more than 12,000 Cuban refugees  
to Miami. At the time, the government routinely granted political  
asylum to Southeast Asians and Central Americans, as well as Cubans,  
while Haitians were detained indefinitely, sometimes abused, then  
usually deported.

The government considered them economic, rather than political,  
refugees, despite having fled the oppressive regime of Jean-Claude  
''Baby Doc'' Duvalier.

About 1 percent of those who sought asylum between 1972-1979 won it.  
Dozens drowned trying to cross 800 miles of ocean in small boats --  
some shoved overboard by the smugglers they'd paid.

Many languished in immigration jails for months, sick with anxiety,  
depression and fear. Many attempted suicide; some succeeded.

Jean-Juste assailed the government's policy as heartless, racist, and  
in at least one case, criminal. That 1978 case involved an 8-year-old  
girl locked in a cell for two weeks with 40 adults after she entered  
the country illegally with her father.

Jean-Juste said she was hysterical when he found her.

The center's volunteer director since July 1978, he was named  
executive director drawing a $16,000 salary, shortly after rescuing  
the little girl.

But he was fired in the fall of 1980, several months after calling the  
Church in Haiti ''a prostitute'' for endorsing Baby Doc's marriage to  
a divorcee.

He launched The Haitian Refugee Center Inc. as an independent agency  
on Northeast 54th Street, and continued his fight through lawsuits.

In July 1980, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King handed  
Jean-Juste's cause a major victory. He ruled that the Immigration aned  
Naturalization Service had systematically discriminated against  
Haitian refugees by issuing sweeping deportation orders, and told INS  
to conduct new hearings for 5,000 refugees.

''We are very happy,'' Jean-Juste said. ``Judge King is a man of the  
Constitution.''

''Father Jean-Juste spearheaded all this,'' said Kurzban, the lawyer.  
``He provided the political direction. . .He was a tremendous  
organizer and got people to demonstrate, and that completely changed  
the dynamic in South Florida.''

Jean-Juste returned to Haiti to work for Aristide. He fell ill with  
leukemia while behind bars in 2005, charged in the murder of a  
journalist.

International pressure the following year led a Haitian judge to drop  
the charge so the ailing priest could seek medical help in Miami.

He still faced what supporters called trumped-up weapons and criminal  
conspiracy charges. Eventually cleared -- and apparently in remission  
-- he returned to Port-au-Prince in early 2008, and had been pondering  
a run for president.

Miami Archdiocese spokesperson Mary Ross Agosta Wednesday night called  
Jean-Juste ``a man, a priest and the voice of the poor, both here and  
in Haiti. We pray his commitments in his life will bring him rewards  
in heaven. May he rest in peace.''

He is survived by two sisters and two brothers.