In the late 1970s many Haitians have migrated into the Palm Beach County area specifically in the south of the County. According to the community leaders’ own non-scientific census, around 7000 Haitian natives lived in the city of Delray Beach in the late 1980s and thousands more were scattered all around the County without a Church or priest to call their own. A few years later, Father Thomas Wensky, now Archbishop of Miami, would start tending to the spiritual needs of the Haitian Catholics in both, the Archdiocese and the diocese of Palm Beach.
Father Wensky was a true missionary who went the extra mile to learn the language of the Newcomers in order to better serve them. His Christian spirit led him to travel by plane, motorcycle and car to reach the Haitians wherever they could be found.
In October 1986 Father Wensky extended an invitation in the name of Bishop daily, the first Bishop of the new diocese to the Scalabrini Fathers to send a priest to serve the Haitians in the Delray Beach area. The Scalabrinians accepted the invitation. In November 13, 1987, Father Roland Desormeaux, C.s, a member of the Scalabrini missionaries landed in the Palm Beaches where he has been tended spiritually and socially to the Haitian in the Diocese of Palm Beach since then.
On December 19, 1987, the newly built mission church was inaugurated by Bishop Daily and baptized “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”. That day, history was made for this was the first Catholic Church built in the United States exclusively for Haitians, obviously the first as well in the Diocese of Palm Beach.