"Faith and Hope in New Orleans:
 Dominicans after Katrina"

Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic
Where Are They Now?

 BEFORE KATRINA
     August 2005

• members of the EMD’s minister daily by bringing their missionary hearts to NOLA people in need of medical assistance, spiritual comfort, emotional support

• Hospice chaplain Diane Hooley, OP works with chaplain Alberta Schindler, OP for Serenity Hospice Center

• Diane and Alberta minister to about 70 patients, about 60% of whom live in a nearby nursing home and the rest in their own or family members’ homes

• Three days before Katrina hit New Orleans, the EMD’s evacuated their most vulnerable members to safety with the Dominican Sisters of St. Catharine in Kentucky

• The Adrian, MI Dominican sisters donated six cars to provide transportation for the EMD’s
   

AFTER KATRINA

         2007

• 12 retired EMD’s relocated in Kentucky and Michigan

• 8 live in New Orleans; 5 in Louisiana; 4 in Arizona; 2 in Michigan; 1 in Florida

• Diane and Alberta spent countless anxious days trying to locate their hospice patients

• Their patients – mostly senior citizens – have lost their homes and cannot talk about the loss

• Many seriously ill patients are traumatized just to hear an occasional heavy rainstorm on the roof

• Not all of their patients survived Katrina’s devastation; the patients’ families now receive the support and care of these Dominican sisters to help them through yet another loss

• Diane’s presence with one particular family “feeds their soul like Eucharist.” The family lives in a one-bedroom FEMA trailer; the 4-year-old child is terminally ill; the father uses a wheelchair (in a one-bedroom FEMA trailer?); when their other child died of a congenital illness, friends and neighbors paid for the funeral
   

Snapshot text by Peggy Ryan, OP (Caldwell)

 

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