Haitians crowd into churches for national day of mourning

Thousands of Haitians crowded into churches in the capital yesterday for a national day of mourning a month after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.

Parishioners filled churches in Port-au-Prince’s Petionville suburb and set up loudspeakers so those in the streets could follow. Religious leaders gathered for an ecumenical ceremony near Haiti’s shattered National Palace to pay their respects to the dead.

Hymns and gospel music pumped throughout the city’s landscape of flattened concrete and sloping buildings.