Louisiana diocese commemorates 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated, transformed Gulf Coast

[Episcopal News Service] Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall 20 years ago on Aug. 29, where the Louisiana-Mississippi state line meets the Gulf Coast, forever altered the communities it ravaged — both the region’s physical landscape and its collective identity.

Even today, “Katrina is part of the lexicon of the area,” Louisiana Bishop Shannon Duckworth said in an interview with Episcopal News Service. “I don’t think a week goes by where I don’t hear a reference to Katrina.”

Duckworth suggested many residents of New Orleans, southern Louisiana and Mississippi’s Gulf Coast see the historic disaster as a clear delineation point, separating “life before Katrina” and “life after Katrina.” Now 20 years later, Episcopal leaders are emphasizing the region’s perseverance, the lessons the region can share with other communities recovering from disasters, and the resolve that the Gulf Coast will need as it continues to face increasingly deadly threats from natural disasters fueled by human-caused climate change.

To pull all those threads together at this moment of commemoration, the Diocese of Louisiana has begun sharing a range of online content, including a podcast episode and video testimonials, about how its communities experienced the deadly and destructive hurricane on Aug. 29, 2005, and how they have navigated the long process of recovery.

The diocese’s commemorations will culminate this Aug. 28 with participation in an ecumenical and interfaith prayer service on the eve of the anniversary, hosted by the Roman Catholic archdiocese’s St. Louis Cathedral.

The Episcopal diocese, along with the region’s communities and residents, is taking this occasion to look back 20 years on the initial grief and trauma caused by Hurricane Katrina. The historic storm flooded nearly all of New Orleans, including its Episcopal churches, and caused nearly 1,400 deaths and economic losses of over $125 million. Against long odds, New Orleans and the region have come back strong, which Duckworth attributes to these communities’ undiminished spirit.

“There’s always a sense of deep, deep faith and hopefulness. That’s one of the things I love about southern Louisiana. It’s sort of built into our DNA,” Duckworth said.

She and other diocesan leaders hope that spirit comes through in the remembrances they have produced about Katrina. The following are some highlights:

Video testimonials: Episcopal congregations across the region worked to support their communities after Katrina hit, while also dealing with storm and flood damage to their own church buildings. Some Episcopalians on the front lines of those efforts recently shared the stories of their experiences in video testimonials that are being posted in short clips on the diocese’s social media pages and will be collected later in longer formats on the diocese’s YouTube channel.

The videos pay particular attention to the experiences of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and School in New Orleans’ Lakeview neighborhood and St. Anna’s Episcopal Church, which, since Katrina, has transformed itself into a community center for the Tremé neighborhood near downtown.

When water from Lake Pontchartrain breached the levees along the 17th Street Canal, it flooded Lakeview and filled St. Paul’s with 8 feet of floodwater. In the diocese’s video testimonials, some members of St. Paul’s recall how everything in the church was ruined except the items that had been left on the top of the altar, which was the only surface that wasn’t submerged.

As soon as the water subsided and the congregation could get back into the church, members began the work of clearing the flood debris, repairing the building and replacing the church’s fixtures and liturgical items — with help from the diocese and Episcopal congregations across the church.

“It was traumatic at the time. But we lived through it, and I think we’re better off today because of it,” Natalie James said. “We’re a lot more giving. We’re a lot more receptive to help others in their time of need. … We did it, and here we are.”

Katrina-themed podcast episode: The diocese launched its own podcast this summer, and its latest episode, released Aug. 18, features interviews with two retired U.S. Coast Guard leaders, Capt. Frank Paskewich and Cmdr. Jimmy Duckworth, who helped coordinate recovery efforts in New Orleans after Katrina flooded the city. (Duckworth is the bishop’s husband.)

The diocese also released the episode as a video on its YouTube channel.

“Love Thy Neighbor”: Karla Sikaffy duPlantier, then the diocese’s Latino/Hispanic ministries coordinator, wrote an article about how Hurricane Katrina forged a long-running and productive partnership between the Diocese of Louisiana and Episcopal Relief & Development. The diocese and the relief agency have worked together to assist Louisiana’s recovery and subsequently helped the church respond to disasters in other dioceses.

One notable example was a gathering this year in July, organized by Episcopal Relief & Development, in which Louisiana leaders shared their experiences and expertise in disaster response with leaders from the Diocese of Western North Carolina, which was hard-hit by Hurricane Helene in September 2024.

“Our model is reshaping disaster response by meeting people where they are and working with them to take the lead in their own recovery,” duPlantier wrote. “It was an opportunity to share and learn from one another.”

Since writing her article for the Diocese of Louisiana about Hurricane Katrina, duPlantier has been named interim missioner for the churchwide Office of Latino/Hispanic Ministries.

Looking back, and to the future: Duckworth, who was consecrated as bishop of Louisiana in November 2022,  also told ENS she wanted to draw renewed attention to the words of one of her predecessors, Bishop Charles Jenkins, who led the diocese through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

In April 2006, Jenkins was invited to preach at Washington National Cathedral. Though his diocese was still reeling from the impact of the hurricane, he sounded a note of hope, suggesting that New Orleans and the region represented an opportunity for the whole country to see itself anew.

“That which happens in New Orleans is not simply about that poor old city near the mouth of the Mississippi; it is about all of us,” he said. “We saw the effects, the horror and the tragedy not only of a flood but also of racism, economic access denied, poverty and social exclusion.

“The temptation is to forget what we saw, build back what was and hope it does not happen again. Such is not worthy of the people of this nation. … We must insist that the new city which rises from the ruin of the old will be a place where our collective values speak to the dignity of every human being.”

The Diocese of Louisiana is still committed to that work today, Duckworth told ENS. “It’s a long process,” she said, but the will and the spirit in her diocese remain strong.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.