The Very Rev. David DuPlantier was just several years into his role as Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. The Category 3 storm led to surges that broke the levees and submerged the city’s Lower Ninth Ward. The disaster claimed thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage.
The Garden District, where the cathedral sits, was among the one-fifth of the city that was not completely flooded or destroyed. But in September 2005, just 26 days after Katrina made landfall, Hurricane Rita struck the Texas–Louisiana border. It wouldn’t be until early October that the centuries-old mother church of the Diocese of Louisiana reopened.
And the moment it did—or, as DuPlantier recalls, “as soon as we get power in”—his colleague, the Rev. Canon Steven Roberts, along with other cathedral staff members and parishioners, sprang into action.
Providing purified water was the first priority. From day one the cathedral donated a water purification machine and allowed members of the community to purify their water on church premises. A few days later, several groups began donating bleach and mops as thick mud and debris littered people’s homes.
The donations came in by the truckload, and as the cathedral became more organized in receiving them, semitractor-trailers full of items would arrive every two to three days.
The cathedral became a hub where those wanting to help and those in need came together.
“We also became a central place [for] people that were working on their houses,” DuPlantier said, including residents 20 to 30 minutes away in another part of the city. “They quickly came to learn that we were just giving stuff out.” Only in hindsight, he added, did they realize what had taken place. “But it was an amazing thing to watch.”
On August 31, in a sermon he delivered two days after Katrina’s 20th anniversary, DuPlantier recalled a time when some volunteers took all the donated clothes, placed them on racks, and set them out on the front lawn. “They got the idea that some people coming back [to New Orleans] didn’t have clothes,” he said.
But what happened was that as people were taking clothes, others continued to bring more and hang them on the racks. “And so we would start to see clothes appearing on those racks,” the dean said. “It was the miracle of clothes and fish that it lasted forever.”
“It is one of the most powerful memories that I will ever have,” DuPlantier told the congregation, as he held a piece of paper from 20 years ago listing the names of individuals who received assistance from the cathedral after Katrina. He said cathedral staff kept records to gain a sense of the ministry’s magnitude, which may come in handy for future grant applications. He kept boxes of those files over the years, adding, “I couldn’t bear to throw them away.”
He then directed parishioners to a table at the side of the altar, where a stack of papers—three feet high, possibly numbering in the thousands—was placed.
DuPlantier and Roberts both arrived at Christ Church Cathedral in 2002. On September 5, they spoke to The Living Church about how faith communities, both within and beyond the Episcopal Church, made a difference in New Orleans after Katrina.
“I believe not only the cathedral, but other Episcopal churches in New Orleans, have really successfully continued ministries that serve people’s needs,” DuPlantier said. He cited initiatives started by parishes across the diocese, like the Dragon Café at St. George’s Church, which was established after Katrina to provide hot meals to parishioners who lacked functioning kitchens—or even houses.
The café still runs to this day and continues to welcome residents of Uptown New Orleans every Sunday with a hot breakfast. Now a community-wide effort, it is fully volunteer-run.
DuPlantier also spoke about the Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative, founded in 2006 to assist residents of the Central City neighborhood affected by Katrina. After acquiring a local community development corporation in 2017, the initiative expanded its scope and effect by developing affordable housing across southeastern Louisiana.
Jericho Road has rehabilitated nearly 300 homes for families returning after displacement and developed 106 single-family homes.
“I can point to just about every Episcopal community, and I could go beyond the Episcopal Church in general to say, I think the faith communities really responded incredibly well to the challenges of Katrina, given the constraints of the City of New Orleans,” DuPlantier said.
Roberts, who was key in setting up the system that organized the truckloads of donations during Katrina, believes the church responded in a way that was “moving towards health.”
“We had exposed a lot of things that were unhealthy and challenging for the city,” Roberts said. Through the cathedral’s work and the programs of the Episcopal Church, he believes the community has been engaged in reconciliation and healing that was—and still is—needed.
In November 2005, PBS featured the 200th anniversary of Christ Church, celebrated with a formal concert and the street music of a jazz funeral. The idea was to mourn what was lost with the hope of rebirth.
“And, after Katrina, church leaders said they wanted to demonstrate to their city the fundamental Christian belief that death and destruction never have the last word,” Kim Lawton reported for PBS.
In that segment, DuPlantier told PBS, “We wanted the church to be involved not only in the tangible aspects of human need, but in what we think of as the soul—the theological, the poetic, the musical, the spiritual. All those things are part of the gifts of the Spirit.”
The cathedral dean said that during the post-Katrina years, the Episcopal Church and other faith communities in New Orleans became creative in making their communities better, not just for their parishioners but for the whole city. And this welcoming atmosphere, he said, has served as a public witness that attracts people seeking community.
During his August 31 sermon, DuPlantier emphasized that the call to welcome and be hospitable is not a thing of the past for the church and congregation. “It’s about what we’re called to do now,” he said. After keeping the stack of papers showing what the cathedral community did two decades ago, he added, he is now letting it go.
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
