Louisiana residents and politicians unite to pray for healing

12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 14, 2008
From Wire Reports Cain Burdeau, The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS – As new state leaders attended a prayer service Sunday for guidance in leading Louisiana out of age-old problems worsened by Hurricane Katrina, the infirm gathered in New Orleans and prayed for healing on a personal level.

In St. Mary's Assumption Church, throngs crowded into pews for a healing Mass on the birthday of the Rev. Francis Xavier Seelos, a 19th-century Roman Catholic priest on the path to sainthood.

At the same time, Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal and his administration gathered at St. Joseph Cathedral in Baton Rouge and asked for a blessed beginning to a new governorship. Mr. Jindal will be inaugurated today.

In New Orleans, Beth Giacome, a 34-year-old with Lou Gehrig's disease, sat in a wheelchair, her twin sister embracing her, in the front row at St. Mary's. Her face beamed with optimism. With difficulty in speaking, she nodded when asked if she was hopeful about beating the disease.

In this city dyed in religion, people already call Father Seelos the "saint of New Orleans," and scores of people believe they have been healed of cancer, poverty and near-certain death by praying to him. Healing is on the minds of the folks in this troubled state, and Sunday's full capacity crowd was testament to the need for succor.

"It's amazing. [The Mass] has increased threefold in the last three years," said Susan Parker, an assistant periodontics clinical professor at Louisiana State University.

"The healing of the city – that's what I'm asking for," said Gene Sausse, a 41-year-old sales director for a trash company.

Katrina, priests said, unfolded like a flashback to the times of Father Seelos, who arrived in New Orleans in the wake of the Civil War. The city was bankrupt, broken and occupied by soldiers. It was also under siege from another threat: yellow fever.

Father Seelos, according to church accounts, spent countless hours tending to the sick and contracted yellow fever himself. He died at the age of 48 on Oct. 4, 1867.

Father Seelos was beatified in 2000. For the occasion, his skeletal remains were exhumed and placed in a shrine inside St. Mary's, where his sternum bone is on display and attracts pilgrims from around the nation.

"Katrina put a lot of pain and hurt on people," said the Rev. Byron Miller, the executive director of the Seelos shrine. "Hopefully, they're starting to see that the only hope we have is that a higher power is the only thing that will reach out to us."

He kneeled down before his candle, hung his head and prayed.

Cain Burdeau,
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