The Other Survivors of Katrina

Fr. Brendan Murphy counts himself blessed to be among them. CNS has the STORY He found himself trapped in Lizana, MS by the Catagory 4 storm:

Even though it's less than 24 miles from one town to the other, Hurricane Katrina made Father Murphy a virtual prisoner in the rectory of St. Ann Church in Lizana until after it blew through southern Mississippi Aug. 29. Once he was able to leave Aug. 31, a bridge between Lizana and Bay St. Louis was out, and Interstate 10 was closed in the area, prompting a trip northward to Jackson, where the Divine Word order staffs a parish.

"I tried to get back to Bay St. Louis but I couldn't get back," Father Murphy told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview from Jackson diocesan headquarters, where he had stopped to ask for directions to the Divine Word-staffed parish.

"The police were turning us away and the roads were impassable. Railway tracks were running along there and you couldn't get past the tracks. Looking down, I could see that every house was in a terrible state.

"The tops of the houses were gone," he added. "I don't know how to describe it. It just looked like a bunch of shacks in disarray. I was in shock when I saw it."

Parishioners at St. Ann had asked for a priest to substitute for their pastor, who was on vacation. Father Murphy became the designated substitute.

He said he didn't make any references to the coming hurricane in his homilies. "I think everybody presumed it was going toward New Orleans," Father Murphy said. "I think everybody realized it was going to have an effect on the area, but nobody knew how much."

At St. Ann, for instance, "every building got damaged. The door was torn off the front of the church. Every building had a roof either half-taken or shingles gone," the priest told CNS

Please keep Mississippi's Gulf Coast survivors in your prayers.