Volunteer order helps local, worldwide causes

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

Originally founded by Catholics in the Holy Land to aid lepers, the Order of St. Lazarus continues today as a volunteer ecumenical order in 37 countries that works to eradicate leprosy and assists in other causes such as organ and tissue donations.


Members of the St. Lazarus-U.S. New Orleans Commandery will hold a candlelight ceremony honoring living and deceased organ and tissue donations through its St. Jude ministry Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at St. Francis Xavier Church in Metairie. Any organ donor is invited.

The ceremony will open with a blessing of the honorees, and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg will coordinate the music. A reception will follow in the parish hall.

The event, which is open to the public, will be celebrated during National Donor Sabbath, said Michie Bissell, Order of St. Lazarus Grand Commander of the South, which includes Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee and a few other states.

The Order of St. Lazarus will have a procession with organ and tissue donors and spiritual advisors. A prayer card also will be distributed to promote awareness and education about organ and tissue donation. Monetary donations will be accepted.

Other local activities
The local commandery coordinates monthly events throughout the area for its charitable works, said Bissell, who is from New Orleans. Community needs, identified by members, have included funding a science lab at St. Francis Xavier School in Metairie, supplying refrigerators for St. Michael Special School and helping with the construction of the Father Val Ambrose McInnes, O.P., Center for Catholic Life at Tulane University and the Xavier University of Louisiana Chapel.
 
In addition, contributions have been made to Catholic Charities New Orleans’ Cornerstone Builders program, Luke’s House free medical clinic in New Orleans, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish to buy a piano, St. Patrick Church for the purchase of a computer and printer and Second Harvest Food Bank.

Members also observe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and hold a spring retreat led by the commandery chaplain, who is currently an Episcopalian priest, Bissell said.

The local commandery recently donated $6,000 to Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans to equip its second-floor faculty kitchen with new appliances for nights of fraternity among faculty and others.

Father Josh Rodrigue, seminary rector, and Father Bryce Sibley, a professor of moral theology, thanked the commandery for their charitable works at a formal evening that included Mass in the seminary chapel. St. Lazarus members were decked out in their distinctive uniforms, which include a cape with an eight-pointed, green Maltese Cross, denoting The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Father Rodrigue said the order’s gift would help the seminary further the fraternity among its students and faculty.

“We’re training our men to be ministers of charity,” Father Rodrigue said.


Father Sibley, the former pastor of Our Lady of Wisdom Parish on the campus of the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, directed his remarks in the homily to the seminarians. He said being in the presence of these next-generation Catholic seminarians brought him encouragement and hope.

“To the members of St. Lazarus, I hope today, by worshiping here, that you will walk away with the same measure of encouragement and hope,” Father Sibley said.


After the Mass, Order of St. Lazarus members toured the seminary, attended a reception and had dinner.

Why be a member?
While its organizational history is traced to the Holy Land as a Catholic military order after the First Crusade, the order has been under the spiritual protection of the Greek Catholic Melkite Patriarchs for the past 178 years. The Grand Priory of America was organized in 1971, followed by the Order of St. Lazarus in Louisiana in 1976. The Commandery of the South is the largest commandery in the world with 366 members, Bissell said.

Each commandery contributes to an international Pentecostal Appeal that funds its largest projects, such as helping Ukrainian refugees, supporting a K-12 school with a clinic that educates children from a leper colony, supporting a hospital in Jerusalem that offers job-training to mothers and aiding a leper colony in Hawaii, Bissell said.

The charitable and ecumenical aspect of the organization attracted Mary Ann and Hugh Straub.

“We’re really devoted to it,” said Mary Ann, who joined in 1996 after a coworker thought she might be interested since she is Catholic and her husband is an Episcopalian. “When Hugh came in, he was in charge of charitable work on a local level. I am currently the almoner (who solicits funds to give to charity) at the international level.”

Hugh currently also has an international role.

“The thing we love about the order is that it allows us to put all our charitable donations to work for others,” Mary Ann Straub said.

Among the order’s most notable members have included Archbishop Fulton Sheen; Corinne “Lindy” Boggs, former U.S. Congresswoman and ambassador to the Vatican; New Orleans Archbishops Gregory Aymond, Philip Hannan and Francis Schulte; Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C.; and New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner and philanthropist Gayle Benson.

Members like Bissell are attracted to the order due to its volunteer leaders and philanthropy.

“There is not one paid position internally,” she said. “If somebody wants to do something exclusively for the good of others, it’s the place to be. There are very few organizations who can say that.”

For more information, visit https://www.st-lazarus.net.
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