VOODOO UNDER ATTACK IN POST-DUVALIER HAITI

Thirteen voodoo priests appeared at mass here on a recent Sunday morning and, before the altar of St. Helen's Church, recanted their belief in African spirits and proclaimed their faith in Christianity.

The occasion was tense. A day earlier, lay workers from the Roman Catholic church had smashed the priests' voodoo temples. The parish priest had burned the drums, vessels, potions and crosses that were their cult objects.

Now, by renouncing their ''superstitions,'' the voodoo priests had been told, they could save their lives.

In the three months since the ouster of the Government and the flight of Jean Claude Duvalier to France, where he now lives in a luxury villa inland from the French Riviera, other villagers, many of them from religious groups, have attacked voodoo temples and harassed, threatened and killed their occupants.

According to military, church and local officials, nearly 100 priests and priestesses of Haiti's ancestral religion have been hacked, burned or otherwise put to death by mobs since February.

''The time of voodoo is over,'' said the Rev. Delouis Louis in Port-au-Prince, the capital. ''I am a Baptist minister, we are against voodoo. The sorcerers make money by making people sick. I told the one in my neighborhood that if she practices again, we will smash her place.''

Frank Etienne, a well-known writer and school director, said ''There has been a fanatic crusade.'' It is, he said, ''like the Inquisition, with people dragged off to church or lynched.''

With other intellectuals, Mr. Etienne has formed a committee to defend voodoo as ''the basis of our culture, our world view, our identity.''

Beneath the confrontation lies the older and deeper problem of how to reconcile the two Haitis that uneasily coexist. One is African, with a rich mythology, a pantheon of spirits and distinct moral and social codes that were brought on slave ships from West Africa. The other is Western, first molded as a Catholic French colony, then shifting its model and source of aid to the United States.

A key motive in the attacks on the voodoo priests and priestesses at first appeared to be popular revenge against the Tontons Macoute militia, the powerful political network that served as the pillar of Duvalier family rule and had included many leaders and priests of voodoo communities. In some villages, victims were described as ''sorcerers'' and ''poison makers'' who used their power against people. But Christian groups that have often preached against voodoo as the ''work of Satan'' have also seized the moment of political change to strike at the strong, rival faith. They are mainly the revivalist sects - fundamentalist Protestants and charismatic Catholics - that have most in common with voodoo, often practice faith healing, cultivate religious fervor and believe they receive the Holy Spirit.

The violence appears to have been most intense on Haiti's southern peninsula, west of Port-au-Prince, Its main town is Jeremie, an old coffee port. Military officers said that in the highlands and coastal villages south of Jeremie, close to 60 people had been killed. 'Was a Lot of Magic Here'

''There was a lot of magic here, good and bad,'' said one officer who asked not to be identified. ''Some of the sorcerers reigned as kings and killed.''

Since the colonial days, Westerners have feared and tried to suppress voodoo incantations, dances and animal sacrifices, arguing at times that its world of magic and cult of the dead prevent Haiti's development. Others, including some Catholic priests, say that voodoo grew because the rest of the world long ostracized the republic of rebel slaves and that the voodoo system has given Haiti social cohesion and made its deep poverty more tolerable.

In today's Haiti, voodoo temples abound. Some of them are brightly painted, open places, set in a compound of small sanctuaries, while others blend in among the mud huts of a hamlet or the stone houses of a town.

But since the attack, voodoo priests said, public ceremonies have been few, and many temples have taken down their flags and hidden or buried their crosses and bones. No Voodoo Hierarchy

In several recent gatherings, priests and priestesses, who have no clerical hierarchy, have debated how to react. Insiders said that groups from central Haiti, where the slave centers were largest and voodoo remains strongest, wanted to respond in kind and attack hostile clergy or their churches. Others opposed this, for fear of unleashing a full-scale religious war.

In this country of isolated villages, with little concern for facts and numbers and a tradition of secrecy, it is hard to ascertain the scope of the persecution campaign. Haitians distinguish between the voodoo priest - the guide and the healer of body and spirit - and the sorcerer who casts spells. But the line, it is said, is often difficult to draw.

Asked how many people had been killed since the Duvalier Government fell, Col. William Regala, a member of the Council of Government, said, ''Frankly, I do not know.''

Colonel Regala, who is in charge of army and police, said the attacks on voodoo were ''religious problems'' in which the army and the council could not take sides. ''People must make a specific complaint for us to act,'' he said. Killings Done Collectively

A complicating factor, another official said, is that most attacks and killings have been done collectively. On Haiti's northern plains, in the area of the towns of Pignon and St. Raphael, local officials and military men said at least 24 men and women were killed by mobs in March.

At the mudbaths of St. Jacques, a well-known voodoo pilgrimage site in the north, people reportedly mobilized on hearing that a foreign evangelical preacher had organized a group to seal off the springs by pouring cement in them. ''The plan failed because many people showed up with machetes and sticks,'' said Eustache Esteve, a student of ethnology.

In the south, at Cayes-de-Jacmel, a large group destroyed four temples on April 2, among them the site of Christine Pierre, a priestess or mambo.

''They were many,'' she said, ''they broke almost everything and stole the rest. They yelled they didn't want any more mambos, that I had to come to their church. One of them was a preacher, called Rene.'' Baptist Broadcasts Cited

Several of the actions appear to be the result of the cumulative effect of anti-voodoo sermons and radio broadcasts. While not inciting to kill, vehement broadcasts saying voodoo is ''a national curse'' that must be ''uprooted'' were made by Radio Lumiere, a network run by the fundamentalist Baptist Group of Southern Haiti and financed by missionary groups in Florida.

In St. Helen's Church, high above the port, the Rev. Lucien Cote, a charismatic Catholic priest from Canada, said he had ''exorcised'' several voodooists in the past.

In February, he and several Protestant pastors had prepared a ''big plan'' to uproot voodoo in the region. It involved destroying the sanctuaries and converting the priests. But, he said, Radio Lumiere ''regrettably started too early'' with ''its requests to uproot the sorcerers'' and therefore killing began in other villages. 'They Say We Are Devils'

Some of Haiti's influential voodoo priests gave their views in sanctuaries that remained untouched.

''They say we are devils, that we collaborated with Duvalier,'' said Herard Simon of Desronvilles, considered one of the most powerful men of Haiti's central plateau. ''Catholic bishops always sang the Te Deum for Duvalier. Are they killed, are their churches attacked?''

Frazil Gentil, a 76-year-old voodoo priest who has a large following in the southern highlands, recalled that his father and grandfather had been killed with burning oil in the last anti-voodoo campaign in 1942.

''At that time, we had to practice secretly in the woods,'' he said. ''But voodoo went on and it will. This is the Haitian religion. No one can change that. We came from Africa with it.''