My dear friend Father Michael Champagne spent two years planning his annual boat parade. Privately he told me, “Nobody’s gonna give me a tugboat for two days, that’s ridiculous! And they did.”

And so his annual Eucharistic procession took to the Mighty Mississippi.

I followed the Eucharistic procession down the Mississippi. It was easy to do by car because there were stops along the way. I stood in the heat with faithful Catholics, kneeling in silence when we heard the bells ringing as the boats approached us.

The crowding inside the cathedral in New Orleans made the breezy French Quarters more appealing to me and many others. The PA system allowed us to hear clearly, and many watched the Mass on their phones livestream. Local bystanders fell to their knees!

Early Sunday morning, Father Michael and I were sharing stories with each other when he mentioned his admiration for Father Chester Arceneaux, rector of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in the Lafayette, Louisiana, who had heard the confession of a homeless man at the event.

Although he is suffering from cancer treatments, he attended; but he needed to sit down when all seating was already taken. He asked a man sleeping on a bench to make room for him. After assuring the man that once you are baptized, you are a Catholic for life, the man poured out his painful story and received the sacrament of reconciliation right there on the spot.

This was a shining example of his personal belief that his job as a priest is to be “hope in the midst of despair.”

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Monica Hidalgo Breaux, Ph.D., MSW, earned her Ph.D. from Arizona State University while teaching human behavior and research methods as a faculty associate in the social work graduate program.