The fight for Catholic America

WHEN SHELTON FABRE became a bishop in New Orleans in 2007 he took as his motto a phrase from the prophet Isaiah: “Comfort my people”. It was apposite to the city, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and to the priest himself. The 43-year-old had been drawn to the church by the comfort he and his family received from their parish priests during two calamities. Growing up in New Roads, a small town near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he lost one of his brothers to a drowning accident and another, when Bishop Fabre was 18, to leukaemia. His surviving siblings and parents—a bricklayer and schoolteacher—were broken. “But the church was there for us, comforting us, and that’s what I signed up to do,” he recalls. “I won’t say I’ve done it perfectly, but to the best of my ability I’ve tried to be there for people, to be with them in their communities, to bring them the comfort of Christ.”