After Harvey, acts of mercy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Jenny Faber, [email protected], 832-819-2686

HOUSTON — In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the Ordinariate’s faithful in and around Houston and across North America are banding together to support their neighbors in need.

More than 30 families of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham were evacuated from their Houston-area homes during the torrential storm. Numerous other Cathedral parishioners experienced a loss in property, including vehicles. On Sept. 3, the Cathedral held a black bag collection to support its parishioners who were impacted by the cataclysmic rains that began Aug. 26. 

The Trini Mendenhall Community Center adjacent to the Ordinariate campus was designated a temporary shelter by the City of Houston, Aug. 28. Cathedral clergy and parishioners, along with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, volunteered at the shelter in the wake of the natural disaster. The Cathedral volunteers assisted about 50 flood victims of the rising waters of Buffalo Bayou, which cuts across the a section of Houston near the Chancery and Cathedral. 

(The Sisters of Mary arrived in the Bayou City in August to begin varied ministries in the service of Ordinariate. Their official welcome was scheduled for the 11:15 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral, Aug. 27. However, the hurricane’s arrival postponed their formal welcome, along with the planned Aug. 27 dedication of the Cathedral’s new education and music building, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Hall.)

Families of St. Margaret of Scotland Ordinariate Community remained secure during the storm. The community draws parishioners from and around Katy, a Houston-area suburb about 20 miles west of the Cathedral. Rev. Steve Sellers and Rev. Scott Blick, the Ordinariate clergy who serve St. Margaret’s, also work for St. John XXIII College Preparatory School, where the Ordinariate community meets each Sunday. About 20 school families lost their homes and possessions to flooding. Fr. Sellers, who serves as the school’s president and as administrator of St. Margaret’s, said he is busy coordinating 415 high school students into work crews to assist hurricane victims.

The high school — where two of the Sisters of Mary now teach — is set to resume classes after Labor Day. The offices of the Cathedral and St. Margaret’s will also begin normal business hours the week of Sept. 5. 

Most Rev. Steven J. Lopes, bishop of the Ordinariate, drove to the Dallas-Fort Worth area on Aug. 26, ahead of the flooding in Houston. There, he celebrated Mass and visited with the Ordinariate community of St. John Vianney in north central Texas. On Aug. 27, he left the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for Australia for a meeting with the Ordinaries of the other Personal Ordinariates in the world and to present at the Clergy Assembly for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross. 

In his absence from Houston, Bishop Lopes offered use of his personal residence to an Ordinariate family that had lost electricity and experienced rising floodwaters during the hurricane. The Cathedral parishioners live in Meyerland, a section of Houston near Brays Bayou, which crested during the first days of the storm. 

Ordinariate seminarian Roberto Brunel organized a group of students from the University of St. Thomas to assist evacuees at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the city’s first main shelter, which took in more than 9,000 people at the height of the floods. 

UST — Houston’s only Catholic university — closed during the storm, prompting Brunel to use his time to initiate works of corporal mercy. Brunel and his fellow students prayed the Rosary outside the shelter as part of their service.

Across the Ordinariate, parishes and parochial communities initiated long-distance efforts to support victims. Students at Atonement Academy, the education apostolate of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, collected clothing and more than 1.67 tons of food for disaster relief. Ordinariate parishes in Texas, Missouri and Maryland held second collections for Catholic Charities or other disaster relief organizations serving in impacted dioceses. Other Ordinariate communities encouraged faithful to send resources directly to Catholic social service agencies in the affected areas, since those organizations offered the most efficient means to match funds directly to storm victims. 

Bishop Lopes instructed Ordinariate parishes, parochial communities and faithful to visit the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website on Hurricane Harvey Recovery Relief, txcatholic.org/harvey, for ways to provide financial support to those impacted by the storm.

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