Paul Yi, a seminarian from Baton Rouge, reports on Sunday that Bishop Moran, Fr. Pat, the rector of Notre Dame seminary, Fr. Hampton, Sr. Liz, and ten seminarians were the last to leave the seminary on Wednesday. Water flooded about 1-2 feet in the ground level. Ther seminarians moved all the books from the first two bottom shelves off the basement and moved them higher. However the mold will get them. There are giant holes in the roof of Shaw (one of the seminary buildings). The seminarians tried to plug them, but it will leak much water. Much of the windows facing Carrollton are blown out. There weren’t any looters in the seminary, but it looked like they were waiting for us to leave.

Archbishop Hughes is in Baton Rouge. They are setting up the archdiocese there. The Baton Rouge seminarians met with their vocation director. Fr. Pat expects Jan 1st as the restarting date for classes. We all agreed that it’s impossible, so we are trying to come up with other plans. Alexandria and Biloxi have sent there seminarians to St Meinrad and Josephinum already. Baton Rouge is now New Orleans. Because of such massive influx, many of our resources are taxed. Gas is sparse. Walmart shelves are sparse, consistently.

According to the reports from the seminary, if they got 2 to 3 feet of water at ground level, that means our House of Studies on the seminary campus was flooded on the ground floor. An aerial photograph showed our two cars left behind, the Crown Vic and a station wagon parked where we left them. The Ford Taurus, pictured here, rode out the storm under our nuns bushes and survived without a scratch.

Here’s Sister Joan, recently arrived in Covington from Little Rock, removing branches from the nun’s Camellias while Fr. Gregory picks up debris from the driveway in the background into his yellow wagon. These pictures were taken the day after Katrina left Covington on its way north to Jackson.

What saved the days after the hurricane passed through was this electric generator. You can see a large tree fell on top of it but miraculously stopped just as it hit the top of the generator without affecting its operation. This generator was also the reason our nuns were able to take in the elderly Sisters who had taken refuge at the Benedictine abbey down the road, for the Benedictines lost their generators.

The Covington cleanup crew paused for a Kodak moment here next to the walkway leading from the nuns monastery to their chapel. From left to right are Fr. Augustine from Malabar in India. This Carmelite priest came to the United States to help aleviate our province in its personnel shortage. Having escaped the Tsunami in his country, he found himself in the middle of our hurricane. Next to Fr. Augustine is Sr. Gabrielle, a novice who just received the habit in April, then Sr. Mary Magdalen, Br. Juan Cabrera, seminarian Vicente Lopez from Oklahoma & Fr. Sam Anthony waving his trench digging hand.

At Marylake we have been joined by Fr. Provicial’s family from New Orleans: his Mom and Dad, two brothers with a wife, a parrot and two dogs. I’ll try and take pictures of our refugees, but weare busy now at Marylake planning to bury our Fr. Augustine Healy (not to be confused with the Indian Augustine pictured above) who died Friday near Crowlet Texas. He will be buried at Marylake on Tuesday. Fr. Provicnial left Sunday to help Fr. Ralph prepare for his funeral in Dallas.

Beth Boggess, newly appointed diector of formation in Vidalia LA which is across the river from Natchez sends this: "Just a quick note to let you know that the Vidalia Community members are all o.k. -- we had brief power outages and minor wind damge. Our towns of Natchez and Vidalia are packed full of refugees, so we ask your prayers to strengthen us to serve their various needs! We are very concerned about our brothers and sisters of the New Orleans Community and the various coastal communities."

Bruce Weaver, president of our New Orleans community who lives in Slidell, has just surfaced in Tennessee. Bruce, let us know of the rest of your community.

Mobile OCDS community has survived, although a few calls by president Paul Schubert to all the members, only resulted in answering machines, so we're still not sure.