Here are the people behind the welcome - Cathedral of the Nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary, Biloxi, Mississippi

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 17, 1997 by Arthur Jones

BILOXI, Miss. -- At the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it's the people who make this community so dynamic, so alive and so welcoming.

Jim Russell

When Jim Russell came down from upstate New York in 1967 to see if he might consider being ordained for a Mississippi diocese he "didn't know how many s's were in Mississippi, whether the streets were paved or whether I'd be allowed in certain places. All the preconceived ideas of a New England collegian. I came down and I loved it."

With seven years of seminary schooling in New York and Canada, Russell was only 18 months away from ordination. But he wanted to be ordained for somewhere that needed priests. "There were five priests in my parish in Rome, New York," he said.

In Mississippi he liked what he saw. In the 1970s, he was ordained for the Natchez-Jackson diocese. He became part of Biloxi diocese when it was formed in 1977.

These days, as Msgr. James Russell, he is pastor of Nativity Cathedral, the church he has led for 12 years. He is also diocesan vocations director and is much in demand to instruct rectors. The former diocesan communications director, Russell had a television show for 10 years. One of his earliest jobs was as principal and teacher of the parish-based Notre Dame Boys High School (now Mercy Cross, the diocesan-wide coed school).

Russell, 55, has a sense of what works in today's parish

"If you're realistic about the church, and if you've a rather healthy knowledge of yourself and your own limitations and if you're reasonably self-assured, you're not threatened by good theology of church. And good theology of church," said Russell, "is not a theology of priesthood -- unless you understand it as St. Paul did that we are all priests."

Russell conducts tours of the parish plant by car -- that's how large it is. Schools, a Catholic Youth Organization building ("the young people deserve a building of their own"), a former convent, now the' Redemptorist Fathers' retirement home, and a former girls high school, now diocesan offices, make up the facilities.

Why are Catholics attracted to Nativity?

"I think we offer them a comfortable understanding of the fact that they are loved by God," he said, "and that God intends for them and wants them to minister to each other. That's too important to be left to the priest.

"We're reaching out to the unchurched," said Russell, who has his master's from Notre Dame in New Orleans and spent a recent sabbatical at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

How does he deal with divorced persons who have remarried without a church annulment and want to receive the Eucharist?

"I don't think we can punish people," he said. "We have people in this parish who are bleeding all over the place. I don't think Jesus is too hurt if we don't deprive them. Nor am I ready to get in the pulpit and say everybody can come."

While the Renew program, which started small faith communities in the parish, and the catechumenate are parish success stories, Russell sees three unfulfilled parish needs. Young married couples and young singles need programs, he said, and after the catechumenate, people who were being doted on "can't just be dropped like a hot potato." A between-the-Masses gathering on Sunday for follow-up sharing for new Catholics and those who have returned to the church is planned.

What doesn't he do well?

"We have some 60 people involved in care ministry, eucharistic ministry to the sick, hospice," he said, "and one of my weaknesses is hospital visiting. I do it but with great reluctance. You know with my master of divinity and all, I couldn't do half of what that Tonsie [Gaude, a woman in the parish] does."

Tonsie Gaude

Tonsie Gaude is slender, somewhat frail, clear-eyed and clear-voiced with a reassuring manner. Hortense Gaude's first name is pronounced in the French fashion -- "Ortonse" -- which became "Tonsie."

Life has dealt its blows since she wed 72 years ago. She lost her three children -- a daughter to a strep infection, another child to crib death, and her pilot son in Korea. A decade after her son's death her husband died.

"All my life, I really felt this was more than I could bear," she said. "But this community is so supporting -- so wonderful. To do hospital work I had to get over a lot -- to get over the things that had made me unhappy. I feel the Lord took me by the hand and showed me the way."

She shows others the way. She recently gave a new priest and seminarian their weeklong hospital and home visitation in-service instruction.

Gaude likes the way the church has changed, with the Mass in English and lay people with "more responsibility to be a Catholic Christian now, more freedom."

She recalls taking Communion to a woman in the hospital who, until then, had received Communion only from a priest.

"I said, `Well, you know, the priests are all so busy, the bishop sent met' It was certainly so. Actually he had, at the [Eucharistic ministers commissioning] ceremony."

Gaude is extremely active, filling in on visiting when others are away, seeing that people have food, medicines.