The Epis­co­pal Con­fer­ence of Haiti (CEH) has de­scribed as a “heinous crime” the mur­der of two nuns when an armed gang ran ri­ot near Hait­ian cap­i­tal Port au Prince on Mon­day.

In a state­ment, the CEH al­so ex­pressed its “deep sad­ness and out­rage at the trag­ic events” that struck the city of Mire­bal­ais and “once again plunged our coun­try and our Church in­to mourn­ing”.

It said that the mur­ders of Sis­ters Evanette Onezaire and Jeanne Voltaire, among oth­ers are “ heinous crime that serves as a re­minder of the mag­ni­tude of the evil plagu­ing our so­ci­ety”.

The nuns be­long­ing to the Or­der of Saint Tere­sa were killed as mem­bers of the Vivre En­sem­ble coali­tion, a group unit­ing the coun­try’s most pow­er­ful gangs, launched an of­fen­sive in a bid to take con­trol of the coun­try.

Me­dia re­ports said that they had sought refuge in a house as the gang at­tacked the prison and oth­er pub­lic build­ings in Mire­bal­ais, 30 miles north-east of the cap­i­tal.

Gang mem­bers found the Sis­ters’ hid­ing place and shot them dead. A young girl shel­ter­ing with them re­ceived gun wounds to her chest.

In its state­ment, the CEH said that faced with the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try, it wished to “ex­press our close­ness and com­pas­sion for the re­li­gious and bi­o­log­i­cal fam­i­lies of our dear­ly de­part­ed sis­ters.

“Their lives ded­i­cat­ed to the ser­vice of the Gospel and the most vul­ner­a­ble re­main a shin­ing tes­ti­mo­ny to the love of Christ,” the CEH said, “de­nounc­ing “the in­ac­tion of the au­thor­i­ties who, de­spite warn­ings, have failed to take the nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent this tragedy.

“The lack of an ef­fec­tive re­sponse to per­sis­tent in­se­cu­ri­ty is a se­ri­ous fail­ure that en­dan­gers the na­tion, aban­doned to the mer­cy of de­struc­tive forces,” the CEH said, as it “moral­ly con­demned in the strongest terms this bar­bar­ic act, as well as all the vi­o­lence that is plung­ing our coun­try in­to chaos and suf­fer­ing”.

The CEH is call­ing on the armed groups to “im­me­di­ate­ly cease their acts of vi­o­lence and re­dis­cov­er a sense of re­spect for hu­man life,” say­ing “no strug­gle jus­ti­fies blood­shed and the ter­ror sown among the in­no­cent.

“Let’s nev­er for­get that ‘If you want peace, pre­pare for peace,” the CEH said, en­cour­ag­ing the Hait­ian peo­ple “to be vig­i­lant, show sol­i­dar­i­ty, and pray.

”In this or­deal, we must not give in to ha­tred or in­dif­fer­ence. Let’s re­sist through faith and uni­ty, and refuse to let vi­o­lence de­fine our fu­ture. Haiti is pass­ing through the val­ley of the shad­ow, but Chris­t­ian hope as­sures us that the light of the Risen One will il­lu­mi­nate our paths to­ward bet­ter days.”

Ac­cord­ing to Unit­ed Na­tions da­ta, more than 4,200 peo­ple have been killed in Haiti be­tween Ju­ly 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 2025, while an­oth­er 6,000 have been forced to flee their homes.