New Orleans clergy want voice for poor in rebuilding efforts

Published: 2005-09-13

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As News Orleans looks to rebuild, a group of Catholic and Protestant clergy want a seat at the planning table for their poor and working-class African-American parishioners. At a Washington news conference, they proposed a long-term relief plan that builds on the community organizational structure that parishes and congregations already had in place in poor and working-class neighborhoods prior to the destruction by Hurricane Katrina. "We don't want to just receive things. We want to participate. We want you to include us at the table," Edmundite Father Michael Jacques told Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who was also at the Sept. 12 news conference. Father Jacques is pastor of St. Peter Claver Church in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Treme was completely flooded when several levees broke releasing water from Lake Pontchartrain into much of the city. The priest is one of the founding members of All Congregations Together, known as ACT, a coalition of 30 Catholic and Protestant congregations founded in 1989 to improve conditions in their neighborhoods.

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