International Religious Freedom Report 2019: Haiti

The report sets out the legal framework. Religious institutions register with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Denominations to receive government benefits, and registration gives standing in legal disputes, tax-exempt status, and the right to issue civil documents such as marriage and baptismal certificates. Licensing clergy is a government prerogative that requires a dossier of 14 documents and an oath administered by a Ministry of Justice official. A concordat with the Holy See lets the Vatican approve bishops with government consent and obliges the government to pay a monthly stipend to Catholic priests, which it pays to no other religious leaders. A 2003 directive made Vodou an official religion with the right to issue official documents.

On practices, the report states that at the end of the year there were 9,195 certified Protestant pastors, 704 certified Catholic priests, and two certified Vodou clergy. Of the 20 Vodou clergy the ministry approved in 2018, the Ministry of Justice authorized only two, and Vodou federation representatives attributed the refusal of the other 18 to a perception that they did not support the administration of President Jovenel Moise. No Muslim group achieved full recognition, and the four registered Muslim primary schools received no funding while the Ministry of Education granted 50 million gourdes to Catholic schools, 40 million to Protestant schools, and 20 million to Anglican schools in August. The report describes the killing of a Vodou priest by machete in Mackandal in the Grand'Anse Department in September and an attack on a Vodou priestess in Port-au-Prince in October, and it records the arrest in January of four men suspected of killing the Catholic priest Joseph Simoly in 2017. Embassy officials met the ministry and religious leaders, attended the August swearing-in of the national chief Vodou priest Carl-Henry Desmornes, and attended the September dedication of the country's first Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple.