Nuns to be proud of; faithful and from New Orleans

Documentary relates New Orleans nuns' Hurricane Katrina experiences

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-PicayuneThe Times-Picayune
on September 24, 2012 at 10:47 AM

New Orleans' epic struggle to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina has triggered numberless stories of grit, tenacity, faith and charity -- some still surfacing seven years later. Six more come to network television Sunday, when ABC documents the stories of several communities of New Orleans nuns who clung to New Orleans by their figurative fingernails while nature and defective flood walls tried to wash them away.

A frame from the DVD "We Shall Not Be Moved: The Catholic Sisters of New Orleans." Sister Camille Anne Campbell, president of Mt. Carmel Academy, welcoming students back after Hurricane Katrina, January, 2006

The central figures of "We Shall Not Be Moved: The Catholic Sisters of New Orleans" are unmarried, silver-haired, wraithlike women with deeply lined faces -- every one, it seems, at, near, or well past sensible retirement age.
But their stories recall living through the hellish week after Hurricane Katrina, or pitching into the more grueling work of rebuilding their schools, parishes and other ministries.
Thousands of New Orleans area families similarly clawed their way back, of course. But these women were not trying to go home in the usual sense. They were trying to stagger back to the communities they served, who now needed them more than ever.
"We are not told to be in places of privilege or to be in places of comfort, " says Sister Isabel Ordono, speaking for a tiny group of seven Teresian sisters.
"We are supposed to be there, where the interests of Jesus are in the most danger."
WGNO, the New Orleans ABC affiliate, will broadcast the hour-long documentary Sunday at 3 p.m. as part of the network's "Vision and Values" series.
The documentary's roots are strongly Catholic. Financing came in part from Catholic philanthropic sources, and in one case, according to the credits, the Congregation of St. Joseph, one of the orders whose story is told. The production is the work of a Catholic nun, Sister Judith Ann Zielinski, a Franciscan who works for a secular for-profit company that makes a range of films, from television commercials to faith-based documentaries like this one.
The central figures here are a handful of nuns, many of them already reasonably well known for their decades of ministry around New Orleans. They belong to religious communities with deep roots in the city: the Ursulines; Sisters of the Holy Family; the Marianites; Sisters of St. Joseph; Ordono's Teresians; and the Sisters of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.
The documentary also takes a look at the recovery of St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish in Gentilly Woods.
Some New Orleanians may have heard some of these stories. Some are horrific.
There is the story of the Sisters of the Holy Family's Lafon Nursing Home in eastern New Orleans, which did not evacuate ahead of the storm. Although ministered to by staff and volunteers, approximately 20 elderly and frail residents died of stress, heat or other causes before they could be evacuated four days after the storm.
Predictably, civil suits followed the event, but the order's reputation in the community survived intact because of generations of banked goodwill and the nuns' own efforts inside the home during the storm.
There is the story of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, which received refugees directly onto the second floor of their flooded Lakeview convent, then reopened Mt. Carmel Academy four months after the storm.
And that of the Ursulines, who received neighbors into their flooded convent and conducted daily prayer services by lantern- and candlelight in their blacked-out Uptown chapel.
Three of the orders reopened their wrecked schools, each crediting faith with the decision to return.
"Henriette Delille will help us help God's children, " says Sister Jennie Jones of the reopening of St. Mary's Academy. Delille founded Jones' order, the Sisters of the Holy Family, in the mid-19th century.
Other orders, like the Marianites, returned to work among the poor.
"We learned from that experience lessons that only life can teach you, and only faith can make meaningful, " says Sister Camille Anne Campbell, former principal of Mt. Carmel.
"I know the grace of God was with us, and with me, " added Sister Sylvia Thibodeaux, the former head of the Sisters of the Holy Family.
"I believed in God; I hoped in God and I depended solely on God."
Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3344.