Fishing Town Left Without Its Anchor

The little brick church once rang with amens.

For decades, its priest baptized wailing babies and blessed shrimp boats, and concluded Mass during football season by praying for the New Orleans Saints to win a game.

Father Arthur Ginart heard parishioners’ confessions from behind a screen, but knew their voices and their sins.

After Hurricane Katrina bore down on this fishing village in eastern Orleans Parish, locals expected the 64-year-old Roman Catholic priest to help them grieve: They had returned to lawns shrouded in marsh grass, wood planks and stubby posts where homes once stood.

But Father Red, as locals called him, had hunkered down at St. Nicholas of Myra, a parish named for the patron saint of sailors. He is missing, the only one of 190 archdiocesan priests who church officials fear was killed during the hurricane.

“I don’t think it will ever be the same. They will go to church -- there are a lot of good Catholic people who live out here. But he was the priest that fit with the island,” said resident Betty Weinmunson, 72.

This 800-person community is a slender strip of highway lined with weekend homes and fishing camps about 30 miles east of New Orleans. Their daily routines ripple along three lakes -- Borgne, Pontchartrain and St. Catherine -- where anglers haul in crab and shrimp.

Locals call it “the island” in a nod to the surrounding water and its isolation.

As in much of New Orleans, there is a devout Catholic community -- one woman compared a visit from the archbishop to meeting the president.

At his twice-weekly Masses, Father Red would ask God to shelter fishermen during a storm.

“This is a poor man’s paradise,” said weekender Diane Hunter, 60, as she shuffled past boats tossed onto the highway and stairs that climbed to nowhere.

Lake Catherine has weathered other hurricanes, but Katrina howled with such fury that most residents here and in the nearby subdivision Venetian Isles sped away. The few who stuck around watched as gusts punched windows, hurled plates and bowls, and shredded aluminum siding.

When the water retreated, it revealed telephone poles pitched at 45-degree angles, and a restaurant’s worth of china burrowed in dirt.

The church’s windows are blown out; no one can find the pews. The parking lot is piled with clamshells, an organ with half its white keys missing, a Perry Como record: “I Think of You.”

There is a memorial inside. Someone unfolded nine metal chairs, and a hanging cloth vestment rustles. Two chipped Mary statues stare at the chairs; a companion statue may be Jesus or Joseph, but it’s hard to tell since the nose and eyes are gone.

As Lake Catherine rebuilds, residents wonder who can anchor them like Father Red, a no-frills fisherman known in his younger days to kick back a beer or drag on a cigarette.

His janitor mother and bartender stepfather raised him and his brother in New Orleans’ 9th Ward, said his nephew, Michael Ginart Jr., a 44-year-old lawyer. As a youth, Father Red raised a ruckus, and his mother asked their priests to mentor him.

“We’re Irish. Either you’re a policeman or a fireman or a priest,” Michael Ginart said.

The archdiocese said Father Red was ordained in 1966, and served at parishes in Gretna and Thibodaux, La., before ministering to the St. Nicholas flock for nearly a quarter-century.

“Alligators would be out back, and it didn’t bother him in the least,” said Msgr. Clinton Doskey, pastor at St. Pius X Church in New Orleans.

Father Red was nicknamed either for his ruddy, freckled complexion or for his hair and beard, which had dulled from its fire engine color.

He would preach to about 100 people in a cadence that rocked like a boat, his eyes closed so no parishioner thought the sermon was aimed at him or her.

Services ended in about half an hour, a so-called fisherman’s Mass.

“He put things in words fishermen and firemen could understand,” said Sheila Seamen, 45, whose Venetian Isles home was devastated. “He was everybody’s priest, even if you weren’t Catholic.”

The church bathroom was decked in New Orleans Saints wallpaper to honor the priest’s long-suffering team. One dire season, when Saints fans masked their faces with paper bags, Father Red gave the final blessing at Mass and pulled one over his head too.

“He always said he would go to his grave before the Saints won the Super Bowl,” said Vincent Comberrel, 64, who lived in Venetian Isles.

The pastor peppered his sermons with jokes, telling the congregation at a packed Easter service that “one more ‘body of Christ’ and I’d have been out of here,” Comberrel said.

Father Red would often forgo his white collar, not wanting the locals to think he was above them. He blessed firefighters sworn into the volunteer department, which gave him a radio so he could speed to accident scenes, just in case.

“I never felt alone on a call. He made me feel like someone was watching over me,” said Joseph Perez, 53, the department chief.

The island hugged him back, padding his refrigerator with gumbo and trout. “He didn’t have room in his freezer for all that love,” said Michael Ginart, who often stored the leftovers.

The priest told archdiocese officials that he would stay in his run-down mobile home next to St. Nicholas until he retired or died. After the Saturday Mass before Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast, he reassured fleeing families that he would be fine.

“I should have just went there and got him. He couldn’t have said no,” his nephew said. “But it was his church, his place. He wanted to protect it.”

Early that Monday, Perez and two friends knocked on doors where they spotted lights or parked cars. Father Red was camped at the church with water and candles, dressed in a button-down shirt. “He said he would put his life in the hands of God,” the fire chief said.

Perez waited out the winds at a friend’s home, clocking them at 155 mph before the gauge broke. He searched for Father Red’s car in the following days, hoping the priest had escaped to Slidell, La. The water around the church receded. Perez saw the car across the street.

It was empty.

Church officials said they have combed area morgues and found nothing. Locals said the priest’s body was found near the church, but his relatives wait for confirmation.

Father Red wanted his body donated to science, with anything unusable cremated and buried near his brother or their mother, Michael Ginart said.

“I miss him, I miss him, I miss him,” said his nephew, who plans to hold a memorial service at the church.