Don Bosco Prep is mourning the loss of more than 500 students and faculty from a school in Haiti that belongs to the same Catholic order.

As they continued to look for survivors and shelter the homeless, officials from the Salesians of St. John Bosco learned Tuesday that several hundred people had perished, according to Hannah Gregory, a Salesian public relations representative.
The private high school is a part of the Salesian Catholic order, which works specifically with young people around the world, encouraging them to learn and care for themselves. The order had six facilities in Haiti; most have been destroyed. The hardest hit was a compound called Enam in Port-au-Prince that served primary grades and offered vocational training for older children, said the Rev. Mark Hyde, director of the Salesian Mission in New Rochelle, N.Y., which has been designated the command center for Salesian relief efforts in Haiti.

The Salesians have learned that Brother Hubert Sanon, age 85, is among the victims. Father Harold Bernard, age 38, was missing under the ruins for some time but was pulled out alive. Both were on the staff of the Ecole Nationale des Arts et Métiers, or ENAM (National School of Arts and Trades) at Port-au-Prince. It is better known by the generic name St. John Bosco.

St. John Bosco's director, Fr. Attilio Stra, and other confreres were injured. Over 500 pupils are still buried there in the rubble. The emergency rescue services and the Salesians themselves are concentrating on trying to pull survivors from the rubble.

St. John Bosco included a primary school, a technical school, a reception center for youngsters in difficulty, an oratory (youth center), and the main kitchen for feeding tens of thousands of children daily through the “little schools” program of the late Fr. Lawrence Bohnen.

Fr. Pascual Chávez V., SDB, Rector Major of writing from Rome, says, " For us Salesians the most serious losses are, obviously, the loss of human life: the lives of so many of our young people, of children (around 500) and of three of our confreres. The earthquake has destroyed practically all of our works in Port-au-Prince. The Provincial House was seriously damaged and is uninhabitable for all practical purposes. The Technical School, ENAM, has been totally destroyed. The Petites Ecoles of Fr Bohnen has collapsed. The “Lakay” Street Childrens' Home has been destroyed. The Postnovitiate and Study Centre (of Philosophy, also for other Congregations) is completely uninhabitable and must be razed to the ground and rebuilt The Thorland centre has been half destroyed: the areas which accommodated the confreres and youth groups has collapsed. The school at Petion Ville is seriously damaged. You will find photos of all the above in the ANS reports. We need to add to this the damage sustained by Houses belonging to the FMA."

The number of students and personnel killed in the Don Bosco Institute compound in the Cité Soleil area was initially estimated at 200, but has grown to 500, including 250 students ages 5 to 17 years old, Gregory said. Many of the students killed were young women studying to become teachers.

The compound housed a school for gifted students from throughout the mission’s 136 “little schools” and programs for street children. Approximately 25,000 children in the region were fed daily from a Salesian kitchen within the compound that was completely destroyed.

“We had beautiful work going on there, impacting thousands of young people,” said Hyde, who was preparing Tuesday to travel to Haiti today.

Back at Don Bosco Prep, a prayer service will be held Thursday, and the school will continue to remember the victims next week during Salesian Spirit Week.

“You have to do something. But how do you deal with a situation where a school and its population are no more?” said the Rev. Louis Molinelli, director and president of Don Bosco Prep. “It’s not like there was a fire and we have to repair the building. There is nothing there. It’s lost. It’s gone. It’s no more. And these were kids.”

The prep school has been updated about the aftermath through a Salesian newsletter run out of the order’s Italian headquarters. The Salesians are one of the largest Catholic orders, with more than 16,000 brothers and more than 16,000 sisters operating missions in 134 countries worldwide.

“Because we are an international group and an international order, when a tragedy happens … to our sisters and brothers in some other place we feel it deeply,” Molinelli said. “This is our family.”

Don Bosco Prep freshmen and sophomores will attend a Mass on Thursday at 8:20 a.m. and juniors and seniors will gather at 9:50 a.m. for a service that Molinelli will lead.

Clubs, student- and parent-run organizations will funnel their fund-raising efforts “for the foreseeable future,” Molinelli said, to help with health needs and the rebuilding of the order in Haiti.

“It’s so hard to know where to begin because the destruction is so devastating,” he said.