New Orleans: Neighborhoods, Some Still in Ruins, Mourn, Resist Parish Closures

At St. Maurice Church in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, there are no voices in the choir loft, no schoolchildren in the churchyard. St. Maurice’s doors have been chained shut since Hurricane Katrina scattered its parishioners to lives in exile. The eight houses across the street from the immense 18th-century, Spanish colonial-style church are empty. Behind the church and former schoolyard, every house on Tricou Street is empty too. The haunting graffiti of rescue outfits scrawled on flood-marked front porches notes the dates they were searched, whether anyone -- living or dead -- was found in the homes and what became of the pets. A mournful quiet has settled over the neighborhood in the three years since Katrina battered the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and breaches in the levees flooded much of the city.

St. Maurice, founded in 1852 and home to generations of African-American Catholics, is one of 33 parishes closing or being merged in the New Orleans archdiocese’s reorganization plan announced by Archbishop Alfred Hughes in April. Hughes signed papers July 3 to formally close 18 parishes. These communities are celebrating final Masses this month. All closings are to be completed by the end of the year.

According to U.S. Census data released in July, New Orleans is at 70 percent of its pre-storm population. The archdiocese says the Catholic population has shrunk 20 percent. Thus, the archdiocese is shifting its focus from the central city to the growing suburbs. New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish (in this case “parish” is a political demarcation akin to county) will have fewer churches. If an elementary or high school hasn’t opened since Katrina it won’t reopen. Some churches will be used as missions, hosting a single Mass a week; others will be sold.

In many regards the reorganization is no different from those undergone in dioceses throughout the country. Facing the same priest shortage and demographic shifts, New Orleans is not going to keep staffing and maintaining so many parishes cheek by jowl in the central city. “We are now a missionary diocese,” Hughes said.

Parishes whose populations have not returned and those that were clustered close together will close or merge, said Sara Comiskey, spokeswoman for the archdiocese. However, she emphasized that the archdiocese has “a very strong commitment to remaining open in the inner city. Every neighborhood that had a Catholic church will still have a Catholic church.”

But for many parishioners, rolling up the carpets and carting off the stained glass feels like the archdiocese is ceding the future of the city, accepting that some neighborhoods are gone for good. To them the archdiocese’s plan feels like yet another major institution abandoning the city in its time of need.

“Before it was closing the schools, now it’s closing the churches,” said a former St. Maurice parishioner who returned to her house a few blocks away from the church in March. A hospital worker with a 7-year-old son, she refused to give her name, weary of strangers gawking at the destruction of her neighborhood and worried about offending the powers that be in the archdiocese. “They closed this when the population wasn’t here to fight for it. They wasn’t looking for anybody’s opinion, they just did it their way,” she said through a screen door. “People are working on all the houses across the street. We’re trying to come back.”

Some of the closed parishes, like St. Maurice and St. Monica in Central City, are in virtual ghost towns. But other parishes marked for closing or merger are active, with lively neighborhoods, a full roster of Masses and parishioners desperate to remain in the church home they love.