WINTHROP — Early this year, the first plank was laid in a construction project in a mountainous region of Haiti to rebuild a Catholic church that was destroyed in an earthquake in 2010.
Father Real “Joe” Corriveau, a Winthrop native who first moved to the Caribbean nation in the 1960s, founded the parish, St. Anthony of Padua in the town of Fond Oies.
A recent photo of St. Anthony of Padua, a Catholic church in the Haitian town of Fond Oies. The structure, which replaces a church destroyed in a 2010 earthquake, was built with funds raised by people in Winthrop. Contributed photo
Attendees at the groundbreaking included an engineer who had organized the project and a pastor, Father Michard Jean-Jacques, who said a prayer to bless the construction site and wore a white robe, called an alb, and a green stole around his neck.
According to Corriveau, when rain started to fall shortly after Jean-Jacques finished his prayer that day, the organizers saw the weather change as a good sign — not least of all because it would provide some much-needed water for people’s gardens, he said.
But one of the biggest windfalls to come to the parish has come from thousands of miles away: Corriveau’s hometown.
Beginning in 2014, a group of people who grew up with Corriveau — who is almost 85 — began raising funds for the roughly $250,000 construction project. They have so far raised $180,000, which was enough to begin construction on the concrete building, which is 80 feet long and 40 feet wide.