Archbishop Gregory Aymond thanks John Davies, president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, for a $15 million grant to Catholic Charities to provide counseling, education, job training and direct assistance to needy families affected by the BP oil spill.

By Peter Finney Jr.

Admittedly, it’s a difficult situation to explain.

Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans received the largest single grant in its history last week – $15 million from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation – to help lead a consortium of area nonprofits that will aid South Louisiana families impacted by the 2010 BP oil spill.

Almost concurrently, Catholic Charities announced it would wind down Operation Helping Hands, the incredibly successful house-rebuilding ministry it established after Hurricane Katrina, by June 2012.

Some logically might ask: How can the “church” receive all that money and yet still close a home-rebuilding program that in the six years since Katrina has attracted 29,076 volunteers from around the country who have rebuilt 195 homes and gutted 1,983 others?

A look beyond the headlines is instructive.

First, the $15 million grant from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation is money specifically dedicated to providing mental health counseling, job training, education and direct assistance to families who either have yet to be helped by funds made available by BP or have seen those one-time funds not stretch far enough.

“I told Archbishop (Gregory) Aymond, ‘When people hear we got $15 million, they are going to think Catholic Charities has all the money. Your own priests are going to be saying that,’” said Gordon Wadge, president and CEO of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans. “He told me, ‘Yes, we’ll just have to educate them.’”

Wadge said the 18-month grant – which essentially comes from funds provided by BP – is “purposed and dedicated.”

“That’s the way we live (at Catholic Charities),” Wadge said. “We’re always getting ministry monies to do certain things.”

But when the funding from a private foundation or governmental agency is exhausted, Catholic Charities must consider its overall mission in terms of fiscal responsibility.

Case in point: Operation Helping Hands. City and state funds had defrayed the cost of rebuilding materials for the program, but Wadge said those funds have dried up.

“The city is not going to announce until January whether it will give any more grants, and we have staff sitting because we don’t have materials,” Wadge said. “We’re stuck.”

In addition, city and state grants “never cover all the costs. They tell you they’re giving you this money, but you’ve got to come up with 20 percent (more) to match against it. Sometimes we’ve had to wait a year to be reimbursed. We’re floating cash all the time.”

Ultimately, Wadge said, Operation Helping Hands has done an incredible job putting people’s homes and lives back together, but it was never intended to be “a forever project.”

“It’s not a core ministry that we’ve historically done,” Wadge said. “We’ve always had a clock running on it. We’ve been talking about how we could spend down the Katrina monies.”

The final challenge has been a $2 million headache caused by the unwitting installation of  corrosive Chinese drywall in 41 homes that were rebuilt for elderly or disabled homeowners. Catholic Charities got the drywall from a trusted vendor, but as news reports have shown, chemicals in the material can cause serious damage to electrical wiring and appliances.

“We’re committed to taking care of those folks who have Chinese drywall,” Wadge said. “Thankfully, they’re small homes, but we’ve got to redo everything – replace appliances, the whole package.”

Over the next year, Catholic Charities will wind down Operation Helping Hands, which reduced its salaried workforce from 12 to five, and will not take on new clients. Catholic Charities will continue to work with Providence Community Housing, a Catholic housing initiative that has spurred the rebuilding of the Lafitte Housing Development and the surrounding Tremé neighborhood.

Seven new AmeriCorps volunteers arrived Sept. 6 and will work with Operation Helping Hands through June 2012.

“We have compiled some incredible statistics,” Wadge said. “It’s humbling because the Catholic Church has been the largest housing builder in New Orleans with Providence and the whole Tremé neighborhood. We’ve done so many things. But one of the things that gets lost is that we’ve had so many young volunteers come through here who have had life-converting changes. They’ve made significant life choices that are different from what they had done before.”

Sometimes the most gratifying stories encountered by Catholic newspaper journalists are the stories that happen “after the stories.”

I learned of one of those today.

First the backstory.

Over the summer, I met with Katie Windham, St. Cletus School’s talented and enthusiastic librarian, to get the details on a special project she and her students had launched the previous school year.

Sitting at Katie’s kitchen table, conversing over coffee and a delicious cake my hostess had kindly prepared for our morning interview, Katie told me she had spent a good part of her summer break making  a quilt out of fabric swatches her students had donated in early 2011.

The quilt, Katie told her students, would remind the world that even the smallest acts of kindness (in this case, modest offerings of 5-by-8-inch pieces of fabric) could make a difference in the world, given their contributions to “the bigger picture” (a cheerful and cosy quilt).

Making St. Cletus’ quilt even more special was its intended destination: a bed inside New Orleans Catholic Worker, an Uptown house that provides meals, shelter and spiritual support to the poor.

I left Katie’s house that day eager to write the quilt’s story. It appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of the Clarion Herald, along with a couple of photos of Katie’s exquisite handiwork.

Fast-forward to today.

I received an e-mail from Katie saying that she had been meaning to write me for weeks and was just now catching her breath after the start of another school year (Did I tell you Katie has three children ages 6, 5 and 6 months?). The quilt was completely finished, Katie said, and was poised for delivery to the New Orleans Catholic Worker home on Constance Street.

But here is my favorite part of her e-mail: Katie received a phone call from an 87-year-old woman who had read about St. Cletus’ quilt project in the Clarion Herald. The woman, who lives near St. Cletus, contacted Katie to say she would like to donate fabric from her collection for use in future service projects.

“(The woman) used to sew for a bridal boutique and make dresses for Mardi Gras balls back in the day,” Katie writes. “She now makes little baby clothes and donates them to West Jefferson Hospital. I am going to go visit her on Thursday. Isn’t that marvelous?”

Yes, it most certainly is!

I am so gratified to have had a small role in building a bridge between these two very special women.

Who knows what else will be stitched together as a result of their big hearts and creative talents?

Stay tuned …

St. Joseph the Worker first graders Justin Favorite Watson, Kyron Smith and Matthew Moore (l-r) were on the cover of the September 2000 edition of Kids' Clarion, the publication's debut issue. They are now high school seniors.

By Beth Donze

Although it’s been 11 years since Kids’ Clarion debuted as the Clarion Herald’s monthly publication for and by Catholic children in grades K-8, I will never forget the beaming little faces that graced the cover of our very first issue back in September 2000.

Justin Favorite Watson, Kyron Smith and Matthew Moore, then first-graders at St. Joseph the Worker School in Marrero, are pictured smiling from ear to ear on their first day of school, wearing the construction-paper watermelon necklaces they had made in art and holding a real watermelon that their teacher would later cut for snack.

Patricia Smith, St. Joseph’s principal, had decided to treat her students to one final slice of summer by organizing an interdisciplinary day of instruction in which they examined the life cycle of watermelon seeds in science, computed watermelon facts and figures in math, and wrote stories about the fruit in language arts.

The photo reappeared in December 2000, when my Clarion Herald colleague, sports editor Ron Brocato, reproduced the front page of Kids’ Clarion’s debut issue on a T-shirt as his “Kris Kringle” gift to me.

Ron’s present is now full of holes, but the memories of those early assignments are amazingly intact.

Kids’ Clarion marked my first out-of-the-home job since the 1993 birth of my first child. Although I had kept up my writing skills during my 7 and ½ years at home, I felt a bit rusty and more than a little daunted when I was presented with a camera for the first time in my career (“You mean we write the stories and take the pictures?”). Imagine my surprise when I, a New Orleans native, learned there were more than 60 Catholic elementary schools spread out over eight civil parishes. It’s one thing to know that Reserve, Bogalusa and Belle Chasse are cities in your local area, but it’s another thing altogether to master the best routes to those places and their wonderful Catholic schools.

Anyway, I digress. The last 11 years have flown by at an alarming rate. When you start working the K-through-eighth-grade beat, you quickly learn that many of the most Christ-like people in your midst are pint-sized, with wisdom and poise far beyond their years, intellects that are off the charts, and a pureness and generosity of spirit of the sort Jesus repeatedly asks us adults to strive for.

Looking back, there are too many inspirational stories to list: Marianne Gosciniak, the St. Pius X sixth grader whose physical challenges didn’t stop her from using her feet to play complex piano pieces and to paint more beautifully than most of us who are blessed with perfectly functioning hands (An update: Marianne graduated last May as the salutatorian of her St. Mary’s Dominican class).

The list goes on: Christ the King’s Brandon Dellucky, the 11-year-old who lobbied makers of above-ground pools to redesign their ladders following the accidental drowning of his friend; the American flag, composed of red, white and blue cups, inserted into the chain-link fence at St. Louis King of France School after 9/11; the CCD classes for special children taught so lovingly at Our Lady of Divine Providence; the Mary Queen of Peace seventh graders who accompanied parish ministers on their rounds to distribute holy Communion to the elderly and home-bound.

We are a Church of countless young and gifted prayer-writers, musicians, singers, poets, artists, athletes and humorists. Those who lead our young people never flinch when they are called on to guide students though Living Nativities, rosaries, Stations of the Cross, liturgies and service projects.

Students from St. Dominic and St. Charles Borromeo – just to name two elementary schools – remind us that one is never too young to enter into fellowship with the homeless and serve them a meal. At Holy Name of Jesus, I once interviewed a child who had invented a special walker so seniors could more easily transport food from the stove to the kitchen table.

I hope you recall some of these stories, too, and keep Kids’ Clarion in mind when you hear of other talented, spirit-filled youngsters from our Catholic elementary schools and CCD programs. The easiest way to reach me is by e-mail at kidsclarion@clarionherald.org.

By the way, I decided to look up that trio of young men pictured in our debut issue, who are now high school seniors. Kyron Smith attends Archbishop Shaw and Justin Favorite Watson is at John Ehret. If anyone knows the whereabouts of  Matthew Moore, I would love to hear from you!

I also hope you will help me find the next 11 years of Kids’ Clarion stories, so that when today’s first-graders graduate from high school, their toothy smiles can also be immortalized in our pages and in our hearts.

Thanks, kids!

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – To help encourage prayers for a spiritually fruitful World Youth Day in Madrid, the Vatican announced Aug. 11 that Pope Benedict XVI had authorized a special indulgence for anyone who, “with a contrite spirit,” raises a “prayer to God, the Holy Spirit, so that young people are drawn to charity and given the strength to proclaim the Gospel with their life,” a Vatican decree said.

The decree included the offer of a plenary, or full, indulgence to all the young people who will gather with the pope in Madrid. World Youth Day runs Aug. 16-21 in the Spanish capital; the pope arrives Aug. 18.

An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment a person is due for sins that have been forgiven. The conditions necessary for receiving a plenary indulgence include having recently gone to confession, receiving the Eucharist and offering prayers for the intentions of the pope.

Pope Benedict decreed that World Youth Day participants can receive a plenary indulgence if they participate with prayerful devotion in any sacred event or “pious exercise” as well as attend the closing Mass, receive the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist and offer prayers for the pope’s intentions.

The decree, signed by Cardinal Fortunato Baldelli, head of the Vatican office that deals with indulgences, said a partial indulgence also is available to all Catholics who are contrite for their sins and offer their prayers with the pope for young Catholics.

The cardinal also asked priests around the world to make themselves available to hear the confessions of those who want the indulgence and to encourage public prayers for the success of World Youth Day.

In central Madrid’s Buen Retiro Park, 200 portable confessionals will be set up for confessions that begin Aug. 14. The pope will hear confessions at the park Aug. 20.

Msgr. Robert Guste, who was in residence at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Kenner, died Aug. 3, 2010. Many who knew him have sent in tributes. Here are a few of them:

From Deacon Jeff Fariss of Kenner

The first anniversary of the passing of Msgr. Robert Guste is here – Aug. 3.

My wife and I so enjoyed being with him every morning at 9 a.m. Mass. I served as a deacon at those Masses since being assigned after Hurricane Katrina. He was such a holy priest, always filled with joy. He prayed about absolutely everything, would buy someone a meal, fill up their car with gas, sit and listen, even to those who wanted his time over and over. He was so patient.

He was pro-life and always encouraged others to go pray outside the “abortion mill” as he called it. And, in spite of his age and health, he would go himself! One of the best stories of his that I remember was when he saw a man bringing a young woman to the clinic. Father Guste called him over and said if he brought her to the New Life Center to have an ultrasound, he would give him $100. The guy took the deal and a life was saved! He told others, and they gave him $100 and he made more deals.

He was fearless in the work of the Lord, a man of prayer and was willing to give his time to any who needed it. Many times, we would hear het got a 2 a.m. call to visit a hospital, but, of course, we’d never hear it from him. He was humble and virtuous, like Jesus, always looking to do the will of His Father.

Missing him, praying for him as we always asked us to do and counting on him praying for all of us.

 From David Rittinger, an altar server at OLPH

With the anniversary of the passing of Msgr. Robert Guest, there are so many things to mention about him.

First of all, during his sermons and the reading of the Gospel, you would think God was talking to you from the pulpit. If you ever had any questions about the Gospel or one of his sermons, he would go out of his way to explain what they meant.

Second of all, Msgr. Guste was a very, very religious person. He always got his message across to the laity. I will always and still miss him and his sermons.

From Diane Ferrara, organizer of Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s food ministry

Fr. Guste was a strong supporter of this ministry. He often came to the pantry and prayed with people. I would see him put his arms around someone and call them his brother or sister.

 From Melissa Maraist

My daughter, Brittany, was in prenatal ICU and only 4 months old. She was critical, suffering severe brain damage as a result of meningitis. Msgr. Guste came to visit during the late evening hours.  Msgr. Guste said he wanted to give Brittany the sacrament of Confirmation. After he confirmed her, we went back to the waiting room and he told me he felt something special about Brittany, and he felt she would be healed. His words gave me such hope!

As her little life went on with severe brain damage, Brittany was healed, not as we want on earth in our humanness, but she was a victim soul and had offered her life to God to suffer for others! She passed away when she was 8 years old.

Msgr. Guste was a blessing to all he met, and he touched our hearts in a profound way to become closer to Jesus!

I love him and miss him dearly!

 Remembrances from Teresa, Buddy and Liza Martin

“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (“Hebrews 7:17).

These words resonate in my mind and heart as I attempt to relate

one of my blessed experiences while being with Msgr. Robert I. Guste at the hospital.

One morning as I entered his room, he was in pain, unable to speak and in an almost

reclining position-yet, he conveyed that he wanted to write. His handwriting was almost illegible.

However, the Holy Spirit allowed me to determine what he had written. I asked if he was telling

me to call the Deacon to ask for a dispensation from the daily reading of the Breviary. He nodded!

He seemed at peace while I held the phone to his ear as he heard the kind words of the Deacon.

Thank you, Deacon Warriner! At such a difficult time, Father remained a faithful, loyal, devoted,

obedient servant of God. Silently teaching me once again- “Do the things you have learned and

you will be blessed”. (From the Liturgy of the Hours).

Eternal rest grant unto him, Oh Lord!

From Debra Bourgeois:

It would be impossible to tell of all the numerous ways this little priest touched my life. The tremendous reverence with which he consecrated the Eucharist at every mass he performed. Like each time might be his last opportunity to hold Jesus. The simple songs he sang with joy as he entered the church for daily mass. His trumpet playing to celebrate All Saints Day Mass. This frail little man never seemed to run out of energy working for God. His last priestly acts of love and mercy were performed in the emergency room while waiting to be attended after his fateful fall. What a kind and faithful servant of Our Lord.

Not that citizens of the Greater New Orleans area need any encouragement to reflect again on a life-changing event, but the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will arrive later this month – Aug. 29.

House painter Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who rescued stranded neighbors in his canoe after Hurricane Katrina, says he holds no malice toward authorities who arrested him after the storm.

The hope is it will arrive uneventfully and leave with little more than a whimper.

At the recent Social Action Summer Institute at Loyola University New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-born New Orleans house painter, transfixed his audience by relating his incredible odyssey in the days and months after Katrina.

As chronicled in “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers – which now has been translated into 20 languages – Zeitoun had spent the days after Katrina rowing his canoe through flooded Uptown streets and rescuing stranded neighbors.

In a classic case of “no good deed going unpunished,” military personnel arrested Zeitoun a few days after Katrina while protecting his own home near Claiborne and Napoleon Avenues.

Because he couldn’t produce ownership papers on the spot – even though his driver’s license backed up his claim he owned the home where he was staying – he was shuffled off to prison and spent weeks imprisoned, including time at Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, La. His pleas to make one phone call to clear up what should have been an open-and-shut case went unheeded for weeks.

“For three days we had no blankets – nothing,” Zeitoun recalled. “We were hanging on the overhead pipes like monkeys to take the pressure off our feet. I was being called ‘Al Qaeda’ and Taliban.’”

Finally, Zeitoun’s wife Kathy, who had evacuated to Arizona with their children, was able to crawl back into their house through a window and find mortgage papers to prove her husband’s story.

No, he was not a terrorist or a member of the Taliban, but an American citizen.

Zeitoun said he hoped telling his story through Eggers would prevent similar travesties of justice in the future. He said he would rescue people again if he has the chance.

“Thank God I had a canoe, because one lady who was calling to me had a very soft voice,” Zeitoun said. “That’s the reason I could hear her. It was very quiet. The other boats were too noisy.”

Zeitoun holds no hard feelings.

“It is positive to let people know what happened because it should not happen again,” Zeitoun said. “I hope it doesn’t happen again in the future. If it happens, we should be prepared differently. I just did what each one of us should do. An opportunity to help someone will not happen again. I never did anything special. I did what I should do from the beginning.”

A portion of the proceeds of the book have been earmarked for the Zeitoun Foundation to aid in the rebuilding an ongoing health of the city of New Orleans and to ensure the human rights of all Americans. Thus far the foundation has distributed $200,000 in grants.

“I have wonderful neighbors, friends and customers,” Zeitoun said. “I look to America the same way my family looks to America. It’s a wonderful country. This was like a dream that never happened.”

We all juggle so much. I think my brain must resemble spaghetti just wiggling on a plate. When will the strands slip onto the floor? We know they do. We all slip up sometimes. Just ask my daughter. Trying to keep up with all she has going in her life and what I have going is daunting. I amaze myself what I accomplish as opposed to what I forget.

When I see all the poverty, homelessness and tough situations people endure daily just outside my office at Howard and Loyola avenues, I know that I am lucky.

With this blog, I hope you can laugh with me, laugh at me, share similar circumstances and commiserate with me and sometimes, even cry with me. But, mostly, I want you to realize that we have to trust that God has a master plan for all of us. We have to try harder not to sweat the small stuff, although I know I do all the time. Keep the faith, remain hopeful and know that tomorrow is another day.

Franciscan Father Dennis Bosse, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels, speaks to parishioners gathered for a July 27 meeting on crime and blight in New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward.

By Beth Donze

Sometimes, anti-crime measures can be as simple as saying “hi” to a stranger in your neighborhood, said Franciscan Father Dennis Bosse, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels Church in the Upper Ninth Ward.

Father Bosse, who came on as pastor earlier this year, said he used to get quizzical looks from people – and even warnings that he was “in a dangerous neighborhood” – as he went on his regular runs.

But it didn’t take long for things to turn.

As people began to see the priest outdoors on a regular basis and were increasingly on the receiving end of his cheerful greetings, Father Bosse was no longer viewed as a neighborhood oddity who dared to take runs, but as a tangible sign of hope.

“(If we greet others), I honestly believe that those ‘hi’s’ and ‘hello’s’ will be returned,” Father Bosse said, adding that the Beatitudes reveal how courageous the Lord wants us to be in serving his people each day. “Hope is just not a future reality,” Father Bosse said. “The kingdom of God is here and now.”

Parishioners are taking their pastor’s words to heart. In addition to becoming better organized to fight crime and blight in the St. Mary of the Angels area, they are anticipating the 2012 opening of a New Head Start center and Catholic Charities office in their parish’s former school building. Such community- and family-building services are crucial to stem the tide of murder, which in New Orleans is largely a crime between acquaintances.

“This community is ready for an explosion – not an explosion of anger or crime, but an explosion of growth, an explosion of new life,” Father Bosse said. “People seem to be coming back!”

So let’s all dedicate ourselves to becoming better peacemakers by saying “hello” to those strangers whom we regularly encounter. Friendliness is free – and it’s contagious!