Reverend Father Louis Farnèse Louis Charles, a native of Croix des Bouquets (Haiti), was the founder of Haiti's first indigenous religious congregation, Les Petites Sœurs de Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus (PSST).  Twelve years after the first foundation, in 1960, he gave birth to a second religious congregation, Les Petits frères de Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus. He is the founder of numerous foundations, organizations and cooperatives. Throughout his life, he was a great humanist, a visionary, a true patriot, an authentic Haitian, a revolutionary, a Haitian maniac. His priestly ministry revolved around these three axes: “Land - Peasant and Peasantry”, hence the charism of his religious congregations: “Evangelization and social promotion of the peasantry”.

He declared in his manuscripts: “I am by vocation a man of the soil, of the good Lord's beautiful nature. From a very early age, I showed as much aptitude for studies as love of farming. I prepared my land with the stumps of spotted tools, fenced my field, planted, irrigated, built my henhouse, raised guinea fowl, turkeys and so on. So much so that I almost lost a finger using a tool (I still bear the mark), so much so that my school principal felt he had to oppose my agricultural and rural activities, arguing that I didn't need them to live: fortunately my parents didn't listen.

“When I became a priest, I was among the first patriots to denounce the national peril of erosion, by word and deed, and I ended up convincing everyone that it's impossible to save Haiti without saving “its peasantry”, first and foremost, of course, the peasants of our mountains, who are by vocation the guardians of nature here. With this in mind, he founded the PRESTEN (Prese Swen Tè Nou) group, whose task is not only to combat erosion, but also to regenerate the national soil.

Attentive to the cries of the Haitian people, he spoke in these terms to the nuns of his congregations: “At the present time, there are peasants dying of hunger. Our institutes should set up houses in the areas concerned, which would serve as bridges through which any help that might come to them from abroad, for example, could pass. What's more, their distress has no voice to be heard outside. Isn't it up to our own people in these homes to give them a voice?

 

​FAC, inspired by the magnanimous vision of the Reverend Father Louis Charles, joins the PSST in pursuing the aspirations of this authentic Haitian by supporting all charities that will have a beneficial impact on the sustainable development of Haiti. Let's keep alive the legacy of Father Louis Charles, elevated to the rank of Servant of God by the Universal Church. Let's invest in Haiti's future, one community at a time.