"Faith and Hope in New Orleans:
Dominicans after Katrina"
The Power of Katrina
"At a Glance”
Snapshot #
4
Eucharistic
Missionaries of Saint Dominic:
BEING EUCHARIST IN A HUNGRY CITY
BEFORE KATRINA
August 2005
22 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)
