New Orleans’ Nuns Ride Out Catastrophes

They stayed through yellow fever epidemics that killed thousands. They hunkered down when cannons roared and blood flowed during the War of 1812. Through fire and flood, the Ursuline nuns endured in this city for nearly three centuries.

Then came Katrina.

The hurricane’s floodwaters rose, the lights went out and the nuns had no choice but to flee. They left by boat, apparently the first time the Ursuline order had evacuated New Orleans since arriving from France, also by boat, one summer day in 1727.

Now they’re back home.

Eight silver-haired Ursuline nuns -- the junior member is 61 -- recently returned to their dried-out convent to live, pray and rejoin a world some first entered as wide-eyed schoolgirls.

A four-month absence is a mere blink in a 278-year presence. And even then....

“I don’t think that we really ever left in spirit -- we were always here,” says Sister Magdalita Roussel, an Ursuline nun for 40 of her 61 years. “The fact that we were not here physically doesn’t bother me that much.... We knew we’d be back one day when the city was ready.”

New Orleans has embraced the Roman Catholic Ursulines ever since the French and Spanish ruled here. For the nuns forced to make a hasty retreat, it is far more than an address.

“You’re not just leaving a city, you’re leaving part of you,” says Sister Damian Aycock, who at age 83 traces her Ursuline pedigree to first grade in the order’s school, back in 1929. “It’s everything we’ve lived, everyone we’ve served.”

Sister Teresita Rivet agrees. “If you are born and raised here and educated here, you can’t forget that,” says the nun, who took her first Communion, her first vows and her final vows under the same roof. “Everything that was important to me in life has taken place in that chapel.”

Now that they’re back, there are routines to resume, and not much time for the rocking chair.

At 91, Sister Marie McCloskey does morning receptionist duty at the convent. Sister Joan Marie Aycock, the 81-year-old sibling of Sister Damian, is the archivist, tending to the Ursulines’ many historical treasures, including a letter from Thomas Jefferson, in a second-floor museum.

And Sister Teresita has her hands full teaching French to 2- and 3-year-olds. “They call me Soeur [‘sister’ in French] T,” boasts the 85-year-old nun.

All the nuns have served in Ursuline convents across America as well as more distant spots, including Cameroon and Mexico. But many have deep roots and a special devotion to this city.

Among them is Sister Damian, who has a quick laugh and playful manner -- “Where’d you blow in from?” she asks an out-of-town visitor -- but a serious message about resilience.

“See,” she confides, “New Orleans has a soul. It’s not something that will come and go.”

And the Ursulines?

“I think our presence makes a difference -- both as history and as a symbol,” she says. “It speaks to endurance, perseverance, support.... We’re a bond between the past and the future. Our job now is to listen and help people get their lives back together.”

That’s already beginning.

The Ursuline Academy -- believed to be the oldest continuously running all-girls school in the nation -- has resumed elementary and high school classes along with its toddler program. Some 585 of 740 students are back. Over the centuries, the nuns have prided themselves on teaching the rich and poor, free women of color, slaves and American Indians.

The nuns celebrated their return in January with a feast day for their patroness, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, or quick help. For centuries, people have flocked to this shrine to pray before a gilded statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus.

Hundreds gathered beneath the iron chandeliers for prayers and hymns in the annual Mass of thanksgiving that marks the anniversary of the U.S. triumph over the British in the Battle of New Orleans.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor’s origins date back to France in the early 1800s.

That’s when an Ursuline nun in New Orleans, short of teachers and seeking reinforcements, wrote a cousin who was at an Ursuline convent in France. When the French nun was told she needed approval from the pope, it seemed unlikely since he was imprisoned by Napoleon.

Yet within weeks, she had permission. She carried with her the wooden statue that generations of Ursuline students have prayed before with these words: “Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us.”

A smaller statue of the Virgin Mary is an even older part of the Ursuline tradition.

It was rescued from a convent attic in France in the 1780s and brought to New Orleans. Decades later, it received an enduring nickname after some Ursuline students and devotees reported that their prayers to the Virgin Mary before the statue had been answered. A nun, Mother St. Benoit, responded by saying: “Oh, she’s a sweetheart!”

Sweetheart is credited with saving the Ursulines’ former convent when fire swept through the French Quarter -- some say in 1812, others think earlier. According to legend, when the statue was placed in the window, the wind changed direction and the building was spared.

In September, as the nuns prepared to evacuate their current home, Sister Carolyn Brockland, the prioress, rolled Sweetheart in bubble wrap, cushioned it in a box with stuffed animals and stored it in a Baton Rouge home of a former Ursuline employee.

The foot-high plaster statue was returned to its glass case in the church. A pair of silver Air Force wings sits at its base -- a token of thanks from a World War II pilot who’d asked to take Sweetheart off to battle, but settled, instead, for pictures.

It’s great to have Sweetheart back, Sister Carolyn says. “It’s a symbol of our presence in the house.”

Sweetheart is just one of many Ursuline treasures. The sisters have a royal seal from Louis XV, who commissioned the nuns to venture here, and a letter from Jefferson.

The president, who had just completed the Louisiana Purchase, assured the nuns of the U.S. Constitution’s “guarantee ... that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.”

The Ursulines also have a bust of Andrew Jackson, who stopped by to thank the nuns for keeping vigil and praying for the success of his troops during the Battle of New Orleans.

These days, the nuns pray for calm waters, among other things.

During hurricane season, they say a special prayer daily at Mass to Our Lady of Prompt Succor for protection against the storms.

Which raises a ticklish question: Did it work with Katrina?

“Obviously, none of us believes prayers are magic,” Sister Carolyn says. “I believe that when we pray, it helps us to be more accepting of what happens in life.”

But, she notes, New Orleans avoided a direct hit. “It is obvious to us the storm could have been worse.”

Gretchen Kane, president of the Ursuline Academy, agrees. “Many of us were spared and kept safe from harm,” she says. “In that sense, our prayers were answered.”

But the 11 1/2 -acre campus in the Uptown neighborhood did suffer $5 million in damage. Even so, the nuns were determined to stay.

When Katrina hit, they huddled with about 30 neighbors in one building, watching the streets disappear underwater, fires erupt and looters edge closer. Some guests took turns patrolling inside, watching for possible intruders.

One neighbor wanted to bring his guns. Sister Carolyn said no. “The people were too fragile,” she says.

One day, she and a neighbor took a frightening canoe trip, paddling past screaming people trapped in their homes and navigating their way over fallen trees and submerged cars as they tried to check on two Ursuline nuns in Memorial Hospital.

Sister Carolyn held up her crucifix as she approached the emergency entrance -- but was turned away because patients were being evacuated, including, as it turned out, the two nuns.

After several days, the Ursuline order’s regional leader ordered the nuns out.

They gathered for a meeting during which Sister Carolyn praised the nuns and read from the writings of the 16th century founder of the Ursuline order with a timely message: Don’t lose hope.

“We all thought about what the original sisters had to contend with -- the mosquitoes, the disease,” Sister Carolyn says. “There were sisters who went through the War of 1812 and the Civil War. There were epidemics of yellow fever. Their courage, their perseverance was an inspiration to all of us.”

The nuns left the Sunday after the storm. Most eventually took refuge at Ursuline convents in Dallas and Alton, Ill.

The eight nuns now home will soon be reunited with a 94-year-old sister, who is waiting for things to settle down before she returns. Three others won’t be back, either for health or personal reasons.

The smaller group of nuns doesn’t escape the notice of Sister Carolyn.

“At some point, there won’t be Ursuline sisters here,” she says. “That makes me sad.”

For now, though, the nuns are grateful to be starting over together.

“You have to move on,” says 91-year-old Sister Marie. “I feel sorry for so many people. They lost everything. But we came back to our home.”