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Hancock County
►	Christ Episcopal, Bay St. Louis, destroyed.
►	St. Ann Catholic, Clermont Harbor, destroyed.
►	St. Clare Catholic, Waveland, heavily damaged.
►	St. Louis King of France, destroyed.
Harrison County
►	Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, Biloxi, destroyed.
►	First Baptist, Long Beach, heavily damaged.
►	First Baptist-Gulfport, heavy water damage.
►	First Methodist, Pass Christian, destroyed.
►	First Presbyterian, Gulfport, heavy water damage.
►	Gulf Shore Bapt. Assembly, Henderson Point, destroyed.
►	St. John Catholic, Gulfport, destroyed.
►	St. Mark’s Episcopal, Gulfport, heavily damaged.
►	St. Michael’s Catholic, heavily damaged.
►	St. Patrick’s Episcopal, Long Beach, destroyed.
►	St. Paul Catholic, Pass Christian, destroyed.
►	St. Thomas Catholic, Long Beach, destroyed.
►	Trinity Episcopal, Pass Christian, destroyed.
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THE JOE SCHOLTES COLLECTION
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The sanctuary of Biloxi’s historic Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, top right, was dealt a fatal blow by Camille’s winds. The bell tower still stands on U.S. 90.
DENNIS HOLSTON
Sacred
Continued from Page 26
find the pair of empty church steps.
“It looked like a battering ram had been working all night. The front was all rubble, and two barges were sitting out front,” he
said. “People presume that the barges came in and battered the church.”
St. Thomas, even as a victim, was a symbol of hope and survival to the rest of the nation.
The Rev. Francis O’Malley, St. Thomas pastor, celebrated Mass amid the ruins on Sunday, Aug. 24. It was broadcast on national radio. An American flag flew from the church steps.
Floating in the Bay
In Bay St. Louis, Camille’s surge washed Elizabeth Johnson Benvenutti, then 15, and six other family members right out of the Beach Boulevard house that served as Christ Episcopal Church’s rectory.
Christ Episcopal was destroyed.
Benvenutti is the daughter of the Rev. Arthur Johnson, church rector. The brick, one-story house
was 16 feet above the Bay of St. Louis, she said.
“The water came up all at once, and poured through the house” she recalled. “There was 3V6 to 4 feet of water. We couldn’t go out the back door because the cars were floating around, so we went out the front door. Water had split it in two. ”
The Johnsons and another family swam 100 yards to a vacant two-story house. The brawling water
briefly pulled the rector from his family.
All survived. “We found outl# the morning that both the church and Coast Episcopal High School had been destroyed,” Benvenutti said.
“I don’t know how my father dealt with losing so much. It must have been faith in God and fellow' man,” she said. “Material things didn’t mean as much after Hurricane Camille.”