February 5
Notre-Dame du Perpétuel Secours, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
During a smallpox epidemic, a copy of the Roman icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was installed in St. Francis' Church in the Bel Air district of Port-au-Prince and processed to a hill to bless the suffering city below. Haitians consider that day, February 5, 1882, to mark the end of the epidemic. Our Lady of Perpetual Help (in Creole, Nòtre Dam Pèpetyèl Sekou) became the official Patroness of Haiti in 1942. In 2007, the Catholic Church there celebrated the 125th anniversary of her miraculous intervention on February 5. But not long after the Haitian Catholic Bishops' Conference designated the church in Bel Air the National Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, it was destroyed in the earthquake of January 12, 2010. The Catholic bishops of Haiti renewed the consecration of their country to Our Lady of Perpetual Help on December 8, 2010. Haiti also honors Our Lady of Perpetual Help on her Catholic feast day, June 27. (Picture of Creole painting outside the chapel of Notre-Dame du Perpétuel Secours in Bel Air from www.belairhaiti.net.)
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