Pastor Joseph Patrice Aristhome was born and raised in a small working-class community near Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. He was well-established there, with his own church and dedicated congregation. 

Then, an American missionary told Aristhome he had a vision of him working as a pastor in the agricultural town of Katye Moren — 140 miles north.

Aristhome took this vision to heart. He spoke with his wife, prayed about it, and determined that God wanted him to make this move, even though he didn’t understand why.

Starting in 2020, Aristhome relocated his family, built a new church named Grace Gathering and recruited members.

Then, in April 2023, an unexpected group of visitors arrived.

“I saw a bus letting people off — about 30 adults and children,” Aristhome explained. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ They told me, ‘The place we live, gangs took it over.’ They killed [more than] a thousand people … They burned homes with people inside. They decapitated people. They shot people. This group fled.”

They were from Aristhome’s previous congregation, in his old community, Sous Matla. Some had been on a mission with him, so they knew where to find him. 

That was the moment Aristhome’s mission changed. He would continue to build his new congregation, but more than that, he would throw himself into helping a growing number of displaced people start rebuilding their lives in Katye Moren.

The exact toll of the massacre in Sous Matla is hard to find. The UN said in a preliminary report that at least 100 people were killed, and almost 4,000 displaced. But Aristhome called these extreme undercounts. He said he knows personally more than 100 people who died that day. And they include some of his close friends and family.

“In my house,” he said, “we spent two or three weeks crying. The water couldn’t stay in our eyes.”

There had already been a trickle of refugees arriving in Katye Moren from Sous Matla in 2022, after the gangs carried out their first attacks in the area. But the April 2023 attack triggered an exodus.

“After that first day in April, from one day to the next, people came,” Aristhomesaid. “In about two weeks, there were some 350 people here with me.”

In the spring of 2025, 60 people remained. Others had moved out after they found the means to rent. But more kept arriving — those who were displaced again when gangs attacked the place they had fled to.

Aristhome pointed out recent arrivals at the church, including a mother and her children lying on a blanket on the cement floor of the large, bare-bones main chamber.

“There are people living in all the rooms of the church,” he said. “In my [own] house, there are more than 13 people, plus my family. So, we’re living in conditions that aren’t acceptable.”

Gang violence on the rise

Gang violence in Haiti has been on the rise for several years, dramatically worsening after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

The gangs have since united into one entity called Viv Ansanm, or “Living Together,” that preys on the general population. They make money from extortion, kidnapping and drug trafficking, which is facilitated by an increased flow of arms from the United States. But the brutality is beyond comprehension.

Sous Matla was not the first massacre, but residents didn’t realize they were in so much danger. 

“We could see the ravaging of Port-au-Prince,” Dachka Roberta Joseph said. “But we never imagined it would come to our homes.”

Joseph is a family friend and relative of Pastor Aristhome. She moved to Katye Moren after one of the attacks.

“We lived at ease, as a family,” she said. “Everyone knew everyone. We had no problems, until one morning we awoke and the gangs had invaded, and everyone was running.”

It also wasn’t the first tragedy to strike Sous Matla. The 2010 earthquake destroyed many homes in the community. 

But eventually, Aristhome said, people were able to return home and start the process of recovering. 

This time, however, it was different.

“Because of the current insecurity, people don’t believe they’ll be able to return home,” Aristhome explained. “Things are getting more difficult. The gangs are getting meaner. We feel that God alone can give us hope, because we don’t have a state, a government or foreigners doing things for us.” 

Sous Matla, Aristhome said, is now a no-go zone. Katye Moren, by contrast, feels safe. But one downside to relocating far away is that the new arrivals don’t know anyone there, which puts a lot of pressure on Pastor Aristhome as he tries to provide material and spiritual support for everyone.

That includes helping with basic needs, including food, getting children into school and helping people search for housing. Aristhome even gives some residents small loans so they can buy and sell goods from the neighboring Dominican Republic. 

This support is made possible by  his salary from an affiliated church in Indiana, as well as the generosity of some organizations and neighbors. But Aristhome said every day is a struggle.

Rebuilding gradually

For 27-year-old Dachka Roberta Joseph, losing her career was a major blow. She was among very few people in Sous Matla to go to college, and she later became the community’s only dentist. Aristhome helped put her through school and then eventually open her own clinic in Sous Matla.

Now she’s trying to gradually rebuild her practice in her new home. Her patients lie on a lawn chair in the church, hold a small bag of water for rinsing, and spit into a trash can during dental procedures. She’s cared for dozens of residents and some neighbors in this way — performing cleanings, and sometimes even pulling teeth or applying braces — with patients paying when they’re able to.

Other kinds of health care are extremely hard to access. And psychological trauma has become a big concern. Aristhome said he’s tried, in vain, to find a psychologist to speak with people.

In the meantime, he’s finding various ways to lift people’s spirits, including occasionally taking groups to nearby historical sites and to the beach. And Joseph and other congregants help out by putting together activities like dance and fashion shows.

On a Monday evening, as Joseph treated patients, singing practice started in an adjoining room. Soon, a melodic “Joyeux Anniversaire,” or “Happy Birthday,” was echoing off the walls. 

Aristhome said the church celebrates residents’ birthdays every month.

The theme of starting over runs through the pastor’s talks, in and out of the church. He emphasizes the significance of displaced residents surviving gang attacks, and now having a chance to rebuild their lives.

“Since God saved you, you can start again,” he tells them. “It will be hard at first, and then, when you’ve recovered, and God blesses you, you grow. You grow where you are.”

Haiti-based journalist Alendy Almonor contributed to this report.