Military priest helps Mississippi pastor pay visit to damaged church

Published: 2005-09-13

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (CNS) -- One pastor's journey to his beloved parish in a Mississippi town battered by Hurricane Katrina began with a Catholic chaplain he had never met. As the only Catholic chaplain for military troops in that area, Precious Blood Father Bill Stang turned to the Internet to locate a local priest to cover Sunday Masses after he returned to Rensselaer, Ind. The chaplain, a lieutenant colonel with the Indiana National Guard, was searching for Catholic churches in Gulfport, Miss., in the Biloxi Diocese. He found three churches -- St. Therese, St. Ann and St. John. He dialed St. Therese first, and it was a good choice. The other two had been destroyed. Josephite Father Raymond Carignan, pastor, answered, and told the chaplain that a fellow Josephite, Father Bartholomew Endslow, 84, would help. Father Endslow was staying with Father Carignan because his own parish, Our Mother of Mercy in nearby Pass Christian, was decimated. Because of Father Stang's military connections, Father Endslow was able to return to Our Lady of Mercy and retrieve from the rubble some sacramental records, a tabernacle and the chalice his family gave him at his 1949 ordination. "If only I knew how my people are, then I would be so relieved," said Father Endslow.

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