Destroyed Biloxi church begins slow rebuilding process

Published: 2006-03-02

BILOXI, Miss. (CNS) -- St. Michael Church in Biloxi is beginning to show signs of recovery. Six months ago, the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina devastated the circular church just blocks from the ocean, smashing stained-glass windows, sweeping away pews and knocking over the heavy stone slab that was the top of the altar. Last year, during a Sept. 12 visit to St. Michael with a Vatican official and other church leaders, Biloxi Bishop Thomas J. Rodi described the church, with its shell-shaped roof, as a place the diocese was "always proud of and will be proud of again." At the time, when visitors had to climb over chunks of broken concrete and climb through the church's broken windows just to see inside, that reality may have seemed a long time away. But March 1, in the quiet, empty church with its boarded-up windows, construction workers were setting up a temporary altar to enable the parish to begin having Masses there again. Since the hurricane, the parish has been celebrating Sunday Masses at the Vietnamese Martyrs Parish in Biloxi.

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