Haiti’s Gangs Turn Churches Into Battlegrounds Denying Residents Their Last Refuge

An August 23 night raid on a hillside community above Haiti’s capital has left at least 47 people dead, more than 50 kidnapped, and a nation’s faithful wondering who is next. The attack at Kenscoff, a farming town in the mountains outside Port-au-Prince, is being called one of the largest mass abductions in the country’s modern history.Twenty-two of the dead were executed inside a church compound where displaced families had gone to hide. When a sanctuary is no longer safe, where do the faithful hide next?United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack, saying the relentless gang violence “underscore[s] the alarming security conditions in Haiti” and reinforces the urgent need to intensify efforts to counter the gangs that dominate much of the country. Kenscoff’s mayor, Jean Massillon, stated that armed men set 25 homes ablaze and killed two municipal employees, including his cousin, who served on his security detail.The Kenscoff massacre, however, didn’t come out of nowhere. For months, Haiti’s Catholic bishops have been pointing to a systematic effort by armed groups to dismantle the institution they see as the last one still willing to confront them.“Churches and their clergy are civil society intermediaries between the powerless and local, national and foreign governments,” the senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute, Nina Shea, tells The New York Sun. “Their buildings provide a modicum of protection to the community. They are a trusted source of comfort and aid, both spiritual and material, in a failed state.”A Campaign Against the FaithfulThe toll on clergy has been mounting for years. In the first seven months of 2026 alone, two priests were abducted, and a seminarian was murdered. In the spring of 2025, gunmen killed two nuns from the Little Sisters of Saint Therese while they carried out their ministry at the south-central city of Mirebalais. In 2024, nine religious sisters, five brothers and four priests were kidnapped in a single wave of violence, with as many as 14 clergy and religious held for ransom simultaneously.Archbishop Max Leroys Mesidor of Port-au-Prince, who leads the Haitian bishops’ conference, has said gangs now enter churches during services specifically to seize worshippers. Money is often the real driver behind that tactic, according to an analyst who tracks violence across the country.“More than 40 percent of violent events targeting members of Catholic and Christian groups are related to the kidnapping of clergy, missionaries, and other church members, with the main objective of seeking the payment of ransom. These types of victims often become more strategic for their visibility and capacity to pay higher ransoms,” the Latin America analyst at the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, Maria Fernanda Arocha, tells the Sun.She also notes that churches “often represent the main institutions that can provide social support to communities, making them strategic targets for attacks,” particularly in remote areas like Kenscoff.Another researcher who speaks regularly with pastors on the ground offers a similar diagnosis, while cautioning against reading the violence as anti-Christian animus specifically.“No direct or exclusive motivation against Christians specifically has been shown; this is set against the unfortunate collateral impact suffered by believers in Haiti more broadly,” Open Doors’ Latin America researcher, Elena García, tells the Sun.Still, Ms. García says some pastors describe the Church as “a spiritual force” that gangs must neutralize before they can fully seize a territory.The head of public communication at ACN International, Maria Lozano, tells the Sun that “by attacking the Church, the gangs seek to weaken both a practical support network and an independent moral authority,” noting that Bishop Joseph Gontrand Decoste has described the Church as one of Haiti’s last remaining “moral, ethical, spiritual and prophetic” retaining walls. Parishes Go DarkRoughly 40 Catholic parishes have shut their doors in Port-au-Prince alone, as have another 15 in the Central Plateau and 10 more in Artibonite, according to figures compiled by Aid to the Church in Need. Schools run by religious orders have been attacked, burned or occupied outright, with some converted into gang bases. A Spiritan seminary in the capital was invaded, its property vandalized, forcing priests and staff to flee.The closures amount to a second catastrophe layered on top of the violence itself, Ms. Shea says.“This is an alarming sign of Haiti’s accelerating descent into a state of total anarchy. Churches have traditionally been an important support system for communities there, providing charity for food, medical care, education, skills training, care for orphan children and other social services,” Ms. Shea continues.“The collapse of this system is catastrophic for innocent civilians, most of whom are already living in or near destitution.”Ms. García describes much the same erosion.“Without a doubt, the closure of church organizations all but eliminates the material, educational and spiritual relief that residents of communities under the control of organized crime in Haiti would otherwise receive,” she says, underscoring that priests, pastors, nuns and missionaries “typically refuse to abandon their communities, despite conditions of extreme hardship and/or violence, out of love for the calling to service they have received from God.”Ms. Arocha says the closures compound an already dire humanitarian picture.“The worsening insecurity has disrupted humanitarian support from religious and international organizations, reducing their capacity on the ground to provide services to vulnerable communities,” she tells the Sun.Ms. Lozano cautions that the shuttering of the parishes has consequences that will outlast the violence itself. “A church can be reopened, but rebuilding trust, education and a displaced community is much more difficult,” she says. Despite the closures, Bishop Joseph Gontrand Decoste of Jeremie told the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need that liturgical life has not stopped, with congregations continuing to pray, sing and dance in defiance of the danger surrounding them.A State That No Longer ExistsArmed groups now control an estimated 70 to 90 percent of Port-au-Prince and have pushed into Artibonite and the Central Plateau as well, collecting illegal tolls and threatening any clergy who refuse to pay. Gang violence killed more than 3,050 people nationwide between January and June of this year and displaced a record 1.5 million people, according to United Nations figures released August 25.Second-quarter data alone tells its own story: nearly 800 rapes, most involving multiple attackers, and at least 81 kidnappings. Then Kenscoff hit, and the numbers climbed higher still.Kenscoff wasn’t a break from the blueprint — it was the blueprint ramping up, Ms. Arocha explains.“The last deadly attack in Kenscoff is consistent with the trend that has been recorded in July, when gangs carried out incursions in the commune, as part of their efforts to expand their control of the capital and surrounding areas despite security operations in Port-au-Prince.” She points out that gangs “continue to rely on large-scale killings of civilians to subdue the local population.”As for what outside powers might do, the three experts point to a similar solution: choking off the weapons that fuel the gangs.Other countries “should work jointly with Haitian authorities to rein in the lawlessness by sharing intelligence, identifying and cutting off sources of funding and arms to the gangs and providing security training for the police and military and even for citizen watch groups,” Ms. Shea tells the Sun, adding that Haiti should be part of President Trump’s “Shield of Americas.”Ms. García says the international community “could exert real pressure to combat the trafficking of high-caliber weapons and ammunition that supply the gangs,” noting that Haiti does not manufacture such equipment domestically.Legislative and presidential elections, originally scheduled for August 30, have been postponed until December 13 when Haiti will hold its first national vote since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. But Church officials say they doubt the vote can proceed credibly while gangs hold so much of the country’s territory.For now, dozens of hostages taken from Kenscoff remain unaccounted for; 13 others, mostly children, were freed in late August after a community leader negotiated directly with the gang; and the count of shuttered parishes keeps climbing.Haiti’s bishops are left making the same argument they have made for years. The attacks on their churches are not incidental to the chaos consuming the country, but a calculated attempt to remove the one voice still willing to call it what it is.“That is why they want to eliminate us,” Bishop Decoste said.

Haiti’s Gangs Turn Churches Into Battlegrounds Denying Residents Their Last Refuge

Haiti’s Gangs Turn Churches Into Battlegrounds Denying Residents Their Last Refuge

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