Storm's Economic Toll at $100 Billion?

Staggering figure, but shows the enormity of the problem.

Explosions Fill New Orleans Sky With Smoke

Chemical plant blows up...unbelievable how this disaster grows more horrible by the day. Also hard to believe that there isn't a way to get these people out of the city faster.

September: Month of Our Lady of Sorrows

When you think about the tragedy of 9/11 that we will commemorate a week from this Sunday and the horrific images coming from the Gulf Coast today it is comforting to think that in Catholic devotion and belief God is not far off but suffers with us. Paul was told by Jesus on the road to Damascus "Why are you persecuting me?" such was the risen Lord's association with those he left behind.

So too in Catholic devotion Our Lady's Assumption has not removed her from our sorrow and this image of a statue that survived Katrina's destruction with a few fingers missing reminds me of that...



"To you do we cry, to you do we send up our sighs, mournings and weepings in this vale of tears, turn then most gracious advocate and show unto us the fruit of your womb--Jesus!"

Feast of St. Giles (Patron of cripples, breastfeeding)

Every now and again there are saints whose lives are just that interesting...

From Catholic Culture:

St. Giles

According to tradition, St. Giles was born at Athens, Greece, and was of noble
extraction. After his parents died, he fled from his fatherland to avoid
followers and fame. He went to France, and in a cave in a forest near the mouth
of the Rhone he was able to lead the life of a hermit. Legend has a hind came
everyday to his cell and furnished him with milk. One day the King's hunters
chased the hind and discovered St. Giles and his secret hermitage. The hunters
shot at the hind, but missed and hit Giles' leg with an arrow, which kept him
crippled the rest of his life. He then consented to King Theodoric's request of
building a monastery (known later as "Saint Gilles du Gard") and he became its
first Abbot. He died some eight years later towards 712.

In
Normandy, France, women having difficulty becoming pregnant would sleep
with a picture or statues of the saint.

In England,
churches named for St. Giles were built so that cripples could reach them
easily, and he was also considered the chief patron of the poor. That in his
name charity was granted the most miserable is shown from the custom that on
their passage to Tyburn for execution, convicts were allowed to stop at St.
Giles' Hospital where they were presented with a bowl of ale called St. Giles'
Bowl, "thereof to drink at their pleasure, as their last refreshing in this
life."

St. Giles is included in the list of the fourteen "Auxiliary
Saints" or "Holy Helpers". These are a group of saints invoked because they have
been efficacious in assisting in trials and sufferings. Each saint has a
separate feast or memorial day, and the group was collectively venerated on
August 8, until the 1969 reform of the Roman calendar, when the feast was
dropped.

Patron: Beggars; breastfeeding; hermits;
horses; physically disabled; woods; blacksmiths; against lameness; against
leprosy; against sterility; against infertility.

Symbols: Hand pierced with arrows; hind pierced with
arrows; gold doe, pierced by a silver arrow; Benedictine with crosier, arrow
piercing hand, protecting hind.

How You Can Help the Victims

Check out Helping victims and survivors

Katrina Refugees will go to Astrodome

From one dome to another...frommlive.com: NewsFlash - Katrina refugees will go to Astrodome:

At least 25,000 of Hurricane Katrina's refugees, a majority of them at the New
Orleans Superdome, will travel in a bus convoy to Houston starting Wednesday and
will be sheltered at the 40-year-old Astrodome, which hasn't been used for
professional sporting events in years.

The Federal Emergency Management
Agency will provide 475 buses for the transfer, and the Astrodome's schedule has
been cleared through December for housing evacuees, said Kathy Walt, a
spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

1,000 Die in Iraq Stamped Fueled by Terror Rumor

From Top News Article Reuters.com:

Up to 1,000 Iraqi Shi'ites might have died in a stampede on a Tigris River
bridge in Baghdad on Wednesday, panicked by rumors a suicide bomber was about to
blow himself up, government officials told Reuters.

Most victims were women and children who 'died by drowning or being
trampled' after panic swept a throng of thousands as they headed to a religious
ceremony, an Interior Ministry official said.

'An hour ago the death toll was 695 killed, but we expect it to hit
1,000,' said Dr Jaseb Latif Ali, a general manager at Iraq's Health
Ministry.