Still Running Off at the Keyboard

The chaos surrounding Hurricane Katrina may have already claimed the life of one of his priests, the Rev. Thomas Kinney, who had cancer and died at St. Clare's Nursing Home in Baton Rouge on Saturday night, just after he evacuated from New Orleans. Two priests who stayed to minister to refugees in the Superdome are missing. Archbishop Hughes has not heard from a third priest, who went to the Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans to tend to elderly, frail and disabled residents who were being airlifted for medical treatment.

Archbishop Hughes is trying to send priests in pursuit of what he described as a diaspora that has emptied half of the parishioners of the eight civil parishes in Louisiana that his archdiocese covers. Priests have been sent to Atlanta, Dallas and Houston and the Louisiana cities of Alexandria and Lafayette to minister to evacuees from New Orleans.

Archbishop Hughes himself fled New Orleans, driving alone in a Ford Taurus, on Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina struck. He said he did so only at the urging of public officials who said he would set an example for residents of New Orleans and would be better able to coordinate the archdiocese's response from a safe location.

Asked whether he still had hope, he declared: "Absolutely. Absolutely. That is the root of our faith.

"The most important thing is to not doubt God's presence and God's saving and transforming grace," he continued. "I'm convinced that God is going to purify us through this."