Much still undone

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

In the year since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated much of the Gulf Coast a great deal of work has gone into rebuilding.

Groups and individuals from every state have gone to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild. Others have sent money or donated other needed items.

For example, Helping Hands of Wisconsin, based in Oshkosh, plans to build 15 completely furnished, 900-square-foot, three-bedroom houses in Gulfport, Miss. An eight-member service group from St. Norbert College spent a week in Pass Christian, Miss., rebuilding a house. St Joseph/Holy Family Parish, Phlox, collected gift cards as a Lenten stewardship project and sent them to a parish in Long Beach, Miss.

A parish in Oakland, Calif., is making quilts for hurricane survivors. A parish youth group in Harrisburg, Pa., is sending bags of religious items to the Biloxi Diocese.

Despite these efforts and more, destroyed homes, businesses, churches and schools are everywhere. Catholic Charities agencies in Louisiana and Mississippi desperately need volunteers to clean or repair thousands of homes. To volunteer go to www.catholiccharitiesusa.org or phone the volunteer coordinators of Catholic Charities agencies in New Orleans (504-310-6960), Biloxi (228-234-3901) or Jackson (601-326-3758).

The National Conference for Catechetical Leadership has posted on its website, www.nccl.org, a list of religious education needs, such as textbooks, computers, Bibles and even carpet samples for children to sit on, for the five affected dioceses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

What else can be done? Br. Steve Herro, O.Praem., listed some possible responses in a story on the St. Norbert College service trip (7/14); they include:

• Pray for the hurricane survivors; thousands are living in tents, trailers, shelters, or with relatives or strangers.

• Form a long term parish partnership with a Catholic parish through Bridget Monahan, at Catholic Church Extension Society, 312-795-6073, or www.catholicextension.org/ppp/).

• Donate to Catholic Charities USA, 1-800-919-9338.

• Give generously to the Hurricane Recovery collection being taken in our diocese Sept. 16-17 or 23-24.