Priest forges Boise-Haiti bond

from the Idaho Statesman

BY ANNA WEBB

Rick Frechette wears sandals and carries a rosary in his pocket. The rosary, its beads woven from brown thread, is nearly weightless. Frechette's skin is ruddy, a sharp contrast to the white vestments he wore Saturday when he helped lead mass at St. John's Cathedral.

Frechette, a priest and medical doctor, made his annual visit to Boise from Haiti this weekend. The visits cement a connection between the Valley and a country infamous for its poverty.

This time around, his travel plans were nearly derailed by the hurricanes that struck the Caribbean and had "Father Rick" wading through mud, bringing water to stranded people and helping nuns trapped on rooftops.

Over 15 years, Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center's "Project Haiti" has given more than $1 million for lab and X-ray equipment at Saint Damien, a children's hospital founded by Frechette in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Frechette finds an easy explanation for the connection between Idaho and Haiti.

"We didn't make it. God did. He finds a way of putting good people together."

Frechette has developed something of a cult status among the Boiseans who know him. Descriptors range from "pied piper," to "the most charismatic person you will ever meet," to "almost diabolically winning."

Saturday, after the St. John's mass, a group of children stood in the pews. Clearly beside themselves with giddiness, they were trying to catch Frechette's eye, and were crestfallen when the wrong adult saw them first and waved instead of Frechette.

The priest has a formidable sense of humor. He refers to the useless items people donate in the name of goodwill as "junk for Jesus," and quipped that the only thing worse than changing diapers, "is changing diapers in a blackout."

But his stories give the sense of how dire life is in Haiti, where most people don't live to see their 50th birthday, and environmental degradation is such that an aerial photograph of the border looks like a swath of watery, brown paint next to the thick, green felt of the Dominican Republic.

Frechette and his staff must regularly face dilemmas like whether it's better to run a breathing machine to keep one child alive, or use the fuel to run a water purifier for the benefit of every patient instead.

"As it says in the Gospels, you leave the 99 sheep and go for the one," Frechette said. He ran the breathing machine. The next day, by chance - or some other power - more fuel arrived.

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