Chicago workers come to aid of hurricane-stricken cemetery

Published: 2005-12-20

CHICAGO (CNS) -- When Rich Chorba arrived at St. Paul Cemetery in Pass Christian, Miss., in November, he had no words for the level of destruction he saw. Chorba, manager of Chicago's St. Casimir Cemetery, said the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina two months earlier was not what he expected. "It was much worse," he said. "It was like someone took a Wal-Mart and turned it upside down and shook it," said Chorba of the debris that filled the cemetery. "There was everything -- toys, pictures, garbage. When I got there, there were still three houses that had to be removed." Those observations were echoed by the other 11 staff members from Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago who spent a week in Pass Christian, a community of about 6,000 people on the Gulf Coast. Chorba arrived with the second group of six from Chicago; the first group followed workers from the cemeteries in the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., and the dioceses of Albany, N.Y., and Rockford, Ill.

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