International Religious Freedom Report 2023: Haiti

The Haiti chapter of the United States Department of State's International Religious Freedom Report for calendar year 2023, prepared by the Office of International Religious Freedom. It follows the series' fixed structure: religious demography, legal framework and government practice, societal attitudes, and United States engagement.

The United States government estimates the population at 11.6 million (midyear 2023). Citing the 2017 mortality, morbidity and service-use survey, the report puts Protestants and related denominations at 52 percent, Catholics at 35 percent and Vodouists at 2 percent, with 11 percent stating no preference; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reports 24,000 adherents, the National Council for Haitian Muslims about 10,000 across Sunni, Shia and Ahmadiyya branches, and the Jewish community about 20 people. The legal framework is unchanged: registration of religious organizations and clergy through the Bureau of Worship confers tax exemption, import-duty relief and the authority to conduct civil ceremonies, and the concordat with the Holy See gives the government a right of consent over bishops that it has not exercised in recent years.

Religious leaders of the Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, Muslim, Vodou and Jewish communities said the government did not restrict religious freedom during the year but that its failure to maintain security hampered practice. In March, after armed men broke into a church during Mass, kidnapped several worshippers and seriously injured others, the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince called on the authorities to protect worshippers and places of worship. In April the news site Vant Bef Info condemned what it called government complicity in insecurity that prevented Easter celebrations, and in September the Haitian Conference of Religious denounced the indifference of political leaders. A Catholic priest in Cité Soleil called continuing gang violence a serious impediment to the free practice of all religions. United States embassy officials engaged the Bureau of Worship and religious leaders, including on the Catholic Church's role in the political dialogue toward elections.