Sister Alicia Costa weeps for New Orleans, the city where her family has lived since time out of mind. She cries for her family, all of them driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Sister Alicia Costa, who teaches education at Seton Hill University, is a member of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans. The sisters' motherhouse and other facilities there were damaged by flooding caused by hurricane Katrina. Click photo for larger image.

And most of all, she mourns the loss of the Sisters of the Holy Family. The order of 140 African-American nuns raised her in its orphanage and welcomed her to its ranks in 1969. She graduated and later taught at St. Mary's Academy, a girls school the order runs in New Orleans' 9th Ward.

Or ran.

"It's underwater, all of it. The motherhouse, the high school, the nursing homes ... The 9th Ward was hardest hit. None of us can even get in there to see the damage. We're not even sure where all of us are yet," Sister Alicia said. "It's really hard, sitting here safe and comfortable, and knowing my sisters, especially the old, frail ones, don't have a home anymore."

Sister Alicia teaches mathematics at Seton Hill University in Greensburg. She moved there a year ago. She was a "gift" from the Holy Family sisters to the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill. In the 1920s, the Greensburg convent sent some of its teaching sisters to New Orleans to educate Holy Family sisters. In segregated New Orleans, a black woman couldn't get a college education.

"Seton Hill gave us scholarships so our sisters could come up here to study, too. We have so much to thank them for. And they keep giving to me ... they've reduced my class load this term so I can cope."

The Holy Family order rose out of racism and slavery in antebellum New Orleans. Its founder, Henriette Delille, was the daughter of an aristocrat and his well-educated, racially mixed mistress. Their relationship was legally sanctioned under "Quadroon law," and their pretty daughter Henriette, as a "free woman of mixed blood," was expected to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a kept woman.

Instead she chose to serve the poor black people of New Orleans as a Catholic nun. The convents of the time barred blacks. So Delille took her inheritance and founded her own order -- right on Bourbon Street, in a mansion that once hosted decadent "Quadroon balls."

New Orleans whites were legally required to teach Catholicism to their slaves, and as later generations moved north, New Orleans became known as a cradle of black Catholicism.

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is no longer segregated, but churches like St. Benedict the Moor in Pittsburgh continue as centers of black Catholicism. There are 1,300 black Catholic parishes in the United States, according to Catholic African World Network estimates.

So far as she knows, Sister Alicia is the only one of her order with access to working computers and telephones. With help from a New York volunteer, she's running a Web site with listings of which nun is where -- most were at six "residence centers" scattered around Louisiana and Texas. "Others are staying with relatives, friends, or other angels of mercy," the Web site says.

"And all they have is the clothes on their backs," Sister Alicia said. "Three were in the hospital when the storm hit, and they were evacuated to three different places -- no one knew where they were.

"And we lost two of them. One in Houston, one in Pineville, La. ... The saddest thing is, we couldn't bury them back at St. Louis Cemetery, back at home."

She thinks the order's buildings are insured, but all their records, archives and memorabilia are lost. Their school buses, habits, 100 new band uniforms, and God-knows-what-else are in ruins.

But the Sisters of the Holy Family were founded on grit, and at least this nun says no hurricane will wipe them out.

"We're not just licking our wounds and feeling sorry for ourselves. All of us that are able are out finding housing and food and clothes, for our sisters and for anyone else."

And they're finding jobs. The order's work included nursing, teaching and administration, and the sisters must now support themselves on whatever they can find.

"It's going to be a long walk back. But God put me here," Sister Alicia said. "I think if I was down there, all the devastation and suffering would paralyze me. But up here, I can get our story out. I can get help. It weighs heavy on my heart, but I'm going to churches and schools now, talking about what happened ...

"I have to ask them for help. We're helpless now. After learning to be so independent, for so long being the ones to give, we have to learn how to receive. We find ourselves among the poor again."

Sister Alicia cried a little.

"None of us knows what's in the future. No one doubts that God is still walking with us, through this. We're at God's disposal now. He's not going to desert the daughters of Henriette Delille."

A rudimentary Sisters of the Holy Family Web site is at www.geocities.com/sistersoftheholyfamilyneworleans. Donations may be sent to Sisters of the Holy Family, Holy Angels Residential Facility, 10450 Ellerbe Road, Shreveport, LA 71106.