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PRAYERS FOR THE VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA
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For those who died in Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath: |
Posted on 08/30/2005 8:55:59 PM PDT by Siobhan
I don't know. I'll try to find out. Is the Rt. Rev. Br. John-Charles, FODC with you?
We have heard from Fr. Sam Maranto, C.Ss.R., Pastor of St. Gerard Parish in Baton Rouge and Fr. Greg Schmitt, C.Ss.R., newly appointed Pastor of St. Alphonsus Parish in New Orleans that all members of the St. Alphonsus community are safe and with electricity, many of them now in Baton Rouge until further notice. Initial reports are that the St. Alphonsus Church tower lies in the courtyard and the buildings have water in them. We have no update regarding the remains of Blessed Francis Xaxier Seelos, C.Ss.R., at his shrine on the same property as St. Alphonsus Parish.
Thank you so much, and God bless you!
No news. The structure should be safe, and I believe it to be secure from looters. I worry about the stained glass fan window over the high altar. If I hear any news I'll post it.
That's good news; thanks, seamole. St Patrick's structure is brick, reinforced with cast iron, with stucco cladding. It's pretty solid, and the iron gates securing ythe rectory and access to the sides and rear of the buildings are quite substantial. The structure is raised about 5 feet above sidewalk level, so I am confident it remained dry. My greatest concern at this time would be the stained glass windows, especially the great fan skylight over the high altar. It's protected by a lexan skylight, but the leading is shaky. If the lexan cover has been lost or damaged, the fan window's fate would be in serious doubt.
Just a follow-up on my post. Memphis Diocese Bishop Terry J. Steib finally got back to Memphis last (Thursday)night. He said that after getting to Baton Rogue, he, along with the group of bishops he was with, had to drive to Houston, Texas to get a flight home. My wife, who works at the Diocesan office, told me he held an all-hands meeting to tell them his story. Lots of tears were flowing. I'm just glad he's back. Just my personal opinion, since he got out, the others in his party should be alright and back in their parishes.
Prayers and support for those affected by Hurricane Katrina.
FNC on Friday evening had a segment on the French Quarter...they showed St. Louis cathedral and it appeared to be in fine shape. Likewise the Cafe du Monde nearby.
St. Peter in Pascagoula
St. Michael at Point Cadet in Biloxi
St. Paul in Pass Christian
St. Thomas in Long Beach
St. Clare in Waveland.
Biloxi Diocese churches suffering major damage and perhaps a total loss: Sacred Heart in Pascagoula
St. John in Biloxi
St. Louis in Biloxi
Church of Vietnamese Martyrs in Biloxi
Our Lady of the Gulf in Bay St. Louis
Sacred Heart in D'Iberville.
[Story] By Scott Hawkins
BILOXI - Bishop Thomas Rodi sat Friday in the darkened Biloxi Catholic Diocese headquarters on Popp's Ferry Road trying to call out on a cell phone that had sporadic service.
Workers cleaned the building that, Rodi said, suffered roof and water damage. The damage was minimal compared to the destruction throughout the 17-county Biloxi Diocese, and the overwhelming devastation, lack of communications and relief aid was starting to show as desperation in Rodi's eyes.
Hurricane Katrina destroyed or possibly damaged beyond repair at least 14 Catholic churches in the coastal counties. Others suffered major damage.
"It has been a catastrophe," Rodi said before running down the list of destroyed church buildings: St. Peter in Pascagoula, St. Michael at Point Cadet in Biloxi, St. Paul in Pass Christian, St. Thomas in Long Beach and St. Clare in Waveland.
"Other places I suspect are destroyed but haven't heard from are Pearlington, Lake Shore and Claremont Harbor. I've heard from most of the priests, but there are still a few I haven't heard from. I don't know where they are. I hope they are OK."
Diocesan churches that suffered major damage include Sacred Heart in Pascagoula, St. John in Biloxi, St. Louis in Biloxi, Church of Vietnamese Martyrs in Biloxi, Our Lady of the Gulf in Bay St. Louis and Sacred Heart in D'Iberville.
"Virtually every one of the buildings are damaged," Rodi said of the diocese's 57 churches, including churches as far north as Laurel. Under different circumstances, Rodi said he would classify the damage at many of the churches as "major." Now he says, "They are OK."
"At this point I'm urging all pastors to celebrate Mass this weekend, either at their church or on the grounds or at a different location. If it is a different location, just put a sign up telling people where to go," Rodi said. "People want to pray. They are asking, 'Where will the Mass be this weekend.'"
The bishop will give Mass at 7 a.m. today (Saturday) at Nativity BVM Cathedral, at 7 a.m. Sunday at St. Rose de Lima in Bay St. Louis and at 9 a.m. Sunday at Our Lady of Lourdes in Pineville, which is north of Pass Christian.
Later Friday, Rodi dropped by the Sun Herald office, asking public leaders to tell the community the truth about the hundreds of deaths. He said he was extremely disappointed with the lack of response from the federal government and armed forces.
"I'm trying not to show my anger," Rodi said. "If the government can't handle it, let the media handle it. They seem to be getting everywhere."
Meanwhile, bishops throughout the nation are sending support and taking up collections, and Rodi said the Diocesan Pastoral Center will be open Tuesday. He is asking employees to report to work if at all possible.
"God will give us the strength to rebuild our lives and help others rebuild their lives. As the Bible says, nothing will separate us from the love of God. In the midst of all this suffering, God will give us the strength to carry on," Rodi said.
Sun Herald editorial writer Tony Biffle contributed to this report.
SIOBHAN SAYS: Remember this week on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Pray for Bishop Rodi and the Diocese of Biloxi. The Cathedral is consecrated to Our Lady under the Feast of her birth which we celebrate this week. Ask your priest if he will offer Mass on the Feast of the Nativity of the BVM of the Bishop and Diocese of Biloxi, for the living and the departed! The bishop and our Catholic brothers and sisters especially need our prayers, Communions, and sacrifices -- and I believe it would be especially appropriate to offer Our Lady's Birthday as a day for the Diocese of Biloxi.
Dear Siobhan,
As the destruction is tolled, it may be a little comforting to know that already, many are marshalling resources to rebuild.
As an example, I know that the Knights of Columbus has already set aside a minimum of $2.5 million in relief for the region, with $1 million minimum set aside to rebuild Catholic schools. That's just what's coming from the Supreme Council.
Already, Catholics from all over the United States are planning and donating for the rebuilding of our Catholic institutions.
sitetest
Diocese of Alexandria
Most Reverend Ronald P. Herzog
4400 Coliseum Blvd.
P.O. Box 7417
Alexandria, LA 71306
Diocese of Baton Rouge
Most Reverend Robert W. Muench
Catholic Life Center
P.O. Box 2028
Baton Rouge, LA 70821-2028
Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux
Most Reverend Sam G. Jacobs
P.O. Box 505
Schriever, LA 70395
Diocese of Lafayette
Most Reverend Michael Jarrell
PO Box 3387
Lafayette, LA 70502
Archdiocese of New Orleans
Most Reverend Alfred C. Hughes
7887 Walmsley Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70125-3496
Most Reverend Dominic Carmon, SVD
P.O. Box 641000
Kenner, LA 70064-1000
Most Reverend Roger P. Morin
7887 Walmsley Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70125-3496
Diocese of Shreveport
Most Reverend William B. Friend
3500 Fairfield Avenue
Shreveport, LA 71104-4108
Now I see that the USCCB site was not updated and does not answer your question. Sorry.
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PRAYERS FOR THE VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA
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For those who died in Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath: |
Sorry, but I don't know how to make it smaller.
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BBC NEWS: VIDEO AND AUDIO Watch President Bush speak as he visits New Orleans  |
That beautiful statue of Jesus behind the Cathedral is just amazing. I'm glad to see it full size.
I didn't know its location. Perhaps this bodes well for the Cathedral.
3 things are on my heart right now.
1. The good people of Mary, Queen of Vietnam Parish,New Orleans. 2. The priests and people of Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church in Biloxi. 3. The Vietnamese Catholic refugees who have shown up at the Vietnamese Dominican convent in Houston. The Sisters need support and help.
Here is an old story that includes reference to Mary, Queen of Vietnam Parish. "This was swamp," said Msgr. Dominic Luong, a Roman Catholic priest and Fordham University graduate who arrived here in the late 1970's. But these days Monsignor Luong can look from his modest office and see a spacious beige church bordered by a trim lawn where three flags -- the Stars and Stripes, a banner representing the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the yellow and red flag of the former South Vietnam -- snap in the spring breeze. The church that rose from this drained swamp is Mary Queen of Vietnam, spiritual home to 5,000 parishioners and a landmark both for the growing influence of Vietnamese Catholics in the United States and for the larger church, too, whose demographic contours are being reshaped by immigration. Major changes in immigration law, together with political and economic upheavals abroad, have brought an influx of Latin Americans, Asians, eastern Europeans and Africans, many of them Catholics whose impact on the church may prove as great as that of the Germans, Irish and Italians who preceded them a century ago. Among this new group, the Vietnamese are a small minority, but their presence is hard to miss. They have formed new parishes and missions across this very Catholic city, as well as in Texas and California, established an annual pilgrimage of tens of thousands of people to southwestern Missouri and, most significantly, produced a disproportionately high number of young men and women studying to become priests and nuns -- when such religious vocations have been in short supply among American-born Catholics. A few miles to the west, for example, in New Orleans's stately Uptown, Vietnamese seminarians make up a fifth of those studying for the priesthood at Notre Dame Seminary. On social issues, they tend to be conservative, opposed to abortion and the idea of women as priests. "Religion is their center -- they brought that with them," said Kyle Dave, 29, a seminarian who is a native of New Orleans and grew up in a neighborhood that absorbed many Vietnamese immigrants. American Catholic officials say most Vietnamese immigrants are Buddhists, but about 300,000 -- perhaps a third of them -- are Catholics. That amounts to less than 1 percent of the estimated 61 million Catholics in the United States. But Vietnamese seminarians make up nearly 3 percent of the approximately 3,500 men studying for the priesthood, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, an organization at Georgetown University that studies such trends. Michael W. Foley, an associate professor of political science at Catholic University, in Washington, D.C., who conducted a study of several new immigrant groups for the American bishops, said, "Seminary enrollments have been on a down slide since the 1960's, and we see some modest recoveries as a result of this new blood." "The same thing is true of the church as a whole," Mr. Foley said. "The Catholic Church is the only mainline church that has not lost members over the past 20 years, and I think a case could be made for the immigrants as the primary reason." In May, the Archdiocese of New Orleans will ordain seven seminarians as deacons, a transitional step toward their becoming priests. Among them is Hoang M. Tuong, 31, a parishioner at Mary Queen of Vietnam, who arrived here in 1984, after he and his family fled Vietnam by sea in a tidal exodus of "boat people." Not long after the family arrived here, he entered a high school seminary, a first step along the road he is now following. "Vietnamese families are very big," Mr. Tuong said, adding that parents often hope to have "at least one" child become a priest or nun. "I have only three sisters," he said. "My family is very small." Monsignor Luong said he was one of 11 children -- 8 boys and 3 girls. One brother also became a priest and serves among the Montagnard people in central Vietnam. Monsignor Luong was ordained in 1965 in New York. Over the last two decades, he has become well known in Catholic circles for his work among Vietnamese immigrants. He recalled the early days in New Orleans East as difficult for Vietnamese Catholics. "We had nothing," he said. "We worshiped outdoors for two years." It sometimes rained on Sundays, but the weather, as he remembered it, always seemed to clear before Mass. The parish at which he presides was founded in 1983, the beginning of a decadelong boom in the area's Vietnamese population, as immigrants who had been settled in other parts of the nation began to move here. A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans said about 20,000 Catholics were of Asian background, primarily Vietnamese -- about 4 percent of the half-million parishioners here. Other big centers for Vietnamese Catholics are Houston; San Jose, Calif., and Orange County, Calif. There are smaller communities as well. Monsignor Luong said he recently traveled to Sioux City, Iowa, for the installation of a Vietnamese-born priest there. Behind his office is a two-story structure that houses a preschool, run by Vietnamese-born nuns who were busy supervising dozens of children in an Easter egg hunt earlier this week. Sister Mary Faustina Nguyen Bach Yen, 28, said she was 8 years old when her family fled Vietnam in 1979. After more than a year in a refugee camp, the family moved to New Orleans. The third child among eight, she originally helped her parents in a small business. But, she said, "I was searching for inner peace." As a teenager, she felt a call to become a nun and eventually joined the Daughters of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, the order that supervises the preschool. It has 40 nuns, and four novices preparing to take vows. But, she said, "This is just a small branch in the United States." The order has hundreds of nuns in Vietnam. Another Vietnamese order visible in the United States is the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, which has a monastery in Carthage, Mo. Each summer, the site becomes a pilgrimage destination for Vietnamese families. "They draw 30,000 to 40,000," Monsignor Luong said. But as Vietnamese immigrants become rooted in the United States, a question arises. How long will such devotion endure in a culture that esteems material wealth and individual choice? Already, some of the nuns at the preschool say, it is less easy to talk to a younger generation about a religious vocation than it was to speak with their older brothers and sisters a decade ago. The preschool's director, Sister Rose Tin Vu, said many adolescents' interests tended toward American culture. "Money and fashion" often preoccupy them, she said. Sister Mary Faustina, who teaches religious education classes to teenagers, agreed. "Most of the teenagers, they've got peer pressure," she said. "It's very hard to listen to the inner voice, to listen to the heart." NEW ORLEANS, April 20, 2004 (New York Times) -- Twenty-five years ago this month, when Saigon fell to Communist armies, the tract of land off Dwyer Road was a just another soggy stretch of wetlands that ran from New Orleans's eastern fringe to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, many miles away.
Dear Siobhan,
I will keep these ones in my prayers, today.
Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give your angels and saints charge over those who sleep.
Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ.
Rest Your weary ones,
Bless Your dying ones,
Soothe Your suffering ones,
Pity Your afflicted ones,
Shield Your joyous ones,
And all for Your love's sake.
Amen
For these who are on your heart, and all who suffer from this catastrophe, my house will pray today.
sitetest
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