Historic jazz church in New Orleans clings to life

By Gary Hill

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A historic Catholic church in New Orleans, a wellspring of jazz and other riches of African-American culture that has fallen on hard times, is facing down a deadline for survival set by its archbishop.

St. Augustine Church was packed and rocking with brass bands and tambourine-shaking choir singers at a jazz Mass on Sunday -- an expression of members' hope and nonmembers' support as the 166-year-old parish scrambles to meet terms set by Archbishop Alfred Hughes for a reprieve from closure.

"I think we're going to make it," Donald St. Charles, a 68-year-old former hospital worker, said after the service, which was also a memorial for TV newsman Ed Bradley.

"Our numbers are up, and our collections are up, so we're doing what we need to do," said Sandra Gordon, a 51-year-old member who said nine generations of her family had been in the church.

The archdiocese, staggered by losses from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, had to make hard decisions about which churches it could afford to repair, reopen or keep open. At one point in a sometimes bitter relationship, the archbishop ordered St. Augustine closed and the parish merged into another.

He relented, but laid out 18-month targets for reversing the decline of its membership, finances and religious activities and for making physical repairs -- challenges all that much more difficult in a city still devastated by the flooding from the bursting of levees after Katrina.

Katrina, which struck on August 29, 2005, killed about 1,300 people.

New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper reported last week that with six months left until the deadline, the church still had quite a way to go to make its numbers. "Threat of closure still looms," it said.