PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (OSV News) -- The six nuns kidnapped in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 19 have been freed, and the archbishop of the capital was overjoyed and thankful at the news. “We give thanks to God! Thank you for your support,” Archbishop Max Leroys Mésidor of Port-au-Prince, president of the bishops’ conference in Haiti, told Vatican News Jan. 25, the day their release was announced. He thanked all those who had “paid attention” and “offered support,” the Vatican media service said. Released with the Sisters were those who were with them on the bus and the driver. The release followed the pope’s Jan. 21 appeal for the release of the sisters and for “social harmony” on the troubled island. The Latin American bishops’ council, CELAM, had announced Jan. 24 as a day of prayer for the release of the nuns, who are members of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Anne. The women, along with other passengers were abducted by armed men while traveling on a bus in Portau-Prince, according to the Haitian Conference of Religious. It is not clear who was responsible for the kidnapping, but it was suspected that it was the work of a gang. “These many kidnappings fill the consecrated people of Haiti with sadness and fear,” said the statement, signed by the conference’s president, Father Morachel Bonhomme.