1959, August 16 – 1961, January 10: (The War Against the Church: Père Grienenberger Expelled, Barbot’s Kokomakak in the Cathedral, Christ Himself Took a Scou…

1959, August 16 – 1961, January 10: (The War Against the Church: Père Grienenberger Expelled, Barbot’s Kokomakak in the Cathedral, Christ Himself Took a Scourge, the Archbishop Deported Without His False Teeth, and Duvalier Excommunicated): Both Duvalier and Barbot had scores against the Church — the hierarchy’s unanimous support of Déjoie, the French domination of the clergy, and the Church’s opposition to the folklorique politics of Vodou. On August 16, 1959, the government ordered the immediate expulsion of Père Etienne Grienenberger, blue-eyed Alsatian headmaster of St. Martial and chaplain of the Boy Scouts, and of Joseph Marrec, curé of St. Marc for thirty years — it is tempting to wonder whether it was he who caned Barbot. Archbishop Poirier reacted with a stiff pastoral letter ordering nationwide prayers for the expelled priests and all other French clergy who could now regard themselves under threat. Late on August 18, over a thousand communicants gathered in the cathedral chanting prayers and a rosary for the departing priests when suddenly Barbot, with his submachine gun, led phalanxes of kokomakak-swinging tonton macoutes into the congregation while another group made for the altar, knocking down priests and sacred objects alike — some sixty were arrested, including numerous broken-headed wounded still bleeding in the aisles. The Minister of Cults, psychiatrist Louis Mars, told the New York Times that Christ Himself took a scourge to expel the evildoers from the Temple. In November 1960, after an eighty-eight-day student boycott, Duvalier struck even bolder: on November 22, catching the archbishop before he had time to shave or put in his false teeth, police swooped into the archepiscopal palace, allowed Msgr. Poirier just long enough to throw on a cassock, and cuffed him aboard the early plane for Miami — where, with one dollar in hand and no false teeth, wearing only cassock and underclothes, he was succored by American priests. In January 1961, Msgr. Rémy Augustin, Haiti’s sole native bishop, was shaken awake and carted off to Fort Dimanche, then shoved onto a plane for New York; four French priests were rounded up and expelled; and the government seized La Phalange. Augustin’s ouster finally stirred the Vatican to excommunicate Duvalier — the first excommunication of a Latin American chief of state since Perón in 1955 — but this notably failed to faze him. Within a month, Bishop Robert of Gonaïves, an uncompromising old Breton in Haiti for thirty-nine years, was expelled for refusing to say prayers for the excommunicate president, as macoutes looted the diocesan warehouse and guzzled sacramental wine.