587 new members join New Orleans parish
A roaring cheer at this year’s conference met the announcement that nearly 600 Catholics across the country had signed up to be associate parishioners at St. Augustine’s Church. This comes as a result of CTA’s JustChurch campaign with the New Orleans parish to increase its membership numbers to help keep the church open.
Two years ago, St. Augustine’s had been threatened with closure, despite its vibrant congregation and historical reputation as the first Catholic African-American parish in the country. After much protest, the Archdiocese and St. Augustine’s agreed that the church would remain open if they would strive to meet certain evaluative benchmarks within a two-year period, such as increased membership after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
As the two-year mark neared, CTA in cooperation with Sandra Gordon, our JustChurch representative in New Orleans, launched a nationwide Associate Membership Drive to increase membership for the parish. The pastor was permitting associate membership from Catholics outside of the parish boundaries due to the few numbers of parishioners who returned to New Orleans after the hurricane.
St. Augustine’s only needed approximately 100 more members to reach its evaluation goals, but because of members like you and PaxChristi/USA who joined the campaign, 587 Catholics joined as associate members. The Archdiocese recently informed St. Augustine’s that their new evaluation date will be this spring. For those of you who signed up as Associate Members, thank you. For other campaigns that seek your support, check out our JustChurch website at www.cta-usa.org/justchurch.