Water Director drinks brown water to show it’s safe
January 28, 2016
Deputy busted and fired
January 31, 2016
A Roman Catholic nun who spent a lifetime rescuing and aiding generations of abandoned, troubled and displaced Bayou Region children was laid to rest Friday in the tomb of a family whose members helped finance her efforts, after a moving and solemn celebration of her passing at St. Francis de Sales Cathedral in Houma.
Sister Rosario O’Connell, an 87-year-old native of Limerick, Ireland, died of what doctors told her attorney and friend, Michael St. Martin, was a combination of factors related to strokes, an ailing heart and other bodily failings.
Those closest to her said rumors of other causes – including the suggestion that her death was caused by a physical altercation with one of the children she was caring for – were not supported by the statements of her physicians.
“I am obviously quite sad about this, but at the same time I have to say that I know where her soul and her spirit is,” said St. Martin, who was with the beloved child advocate when her death occurred at the intensive care unit of Terrebonne General Medical Center, as fellow sisters and child workers sang her to eternal repose with religious and inspirational songs that included “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
“Sister Rosie” as she was known by those closest to her, including the untold number of children whose lives she touched, belonged to the Sister of the Holy Spirit order of nuns.
The Louis Infant Center on Highway 311, which started out as an emergency home for orphans and other children in need, was her life’s work. St. Martin said she locked horns with state authorities on behalf of a child days before her death, demanding that they do what she believed was in his best interests.
St. Martin, a co-founder of the center along with Sister Rosario, is heavily involved in its activities.
Sister Rosario had been hospitalized in October after the Oct. 15, 2015 incident with the 12-year-old center resident, but St. Martin said that by winter she appeared well on the road to recovery.
“Around Christmas week she came to my home numerous times and we visited face to face and we always talked every day about the children and the issues and so forth,” St. Martin said. “I saw her, I watched her, I was very cognizant of how she was coming along from her injury and she was healing quite nicely. She was taking some steroids that Ochsner (Medical System) gave her to reduce swelling on the brain. She was 87-years-old, resilient and tough as can be. I am convinced she had made a more or less complete recovery.”
Terrebonne Parish Assistant District Attorney Jason Dagate said Friday that reports of charges pending against the child in connection with Sister Rosario’s are unfounded.
“There was no way she wanted charges filed,” Dagate said. “He was a low-functioning 12-year-old with a history of being abused and neglected. On Nov. 4 charges were officially declined by Assistant District Attorney Barry Vice . She wanted the child to get treatment.”
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives familiar with the battery case said there is no reason they are aware of that charges against the child would be filed, in the absence of any evidence that the altercation caused Sister Rosario’s death.
Danny Theriot, chief investigator for the Terrebonne Parish Coroner’s Office, said a cause of death has not yet been determined, and that he was still waiting for medical reports.
“She forgave this child and it was not his fault,” said St. Martin, who had access to all medical information regarding the case because he held Sister Rosario’s medical power of attorney.
The child was arrested on a charge of battery as a juvenile in October and brought to the Terrebonne Parish Juvenile Detention Center but released to a hospital once the charge was declined.
“I knew him well,” St. Martin said of the child. “I worked with him for two years. I took him fishing, swimming, he came to my home numerous times.”
The center knew the child had problems, and had repeatedly asked state officials for a “shadow,” someone to watch the child 24-hours a day.”
The state refused, St. Martin said, noting that as former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration continued cutting childcare funding, more children went to foster homes. The ones who came to the center were more often those with severe behavioral problems who could not be managed by foster parents.
“It was obvious to the sister and the child’s psychiatrist that he needed much greater care and that he was potentially violent. When the incident occurred in October the boy blew up and Sister turned to walk out of the room and he slammed her up against the door frame and her head was injured,” St. Martin said. He acknowledged that Sister Rosario suffered another injury when she was bitten by a pit bull while delivering a pie to a family in December. St. Martin said the doctors gave no indication that the bite was related to her death either.
“It was superficial,” St. Martin said.
Those bodily insults defined her death no more than they defined her life, St. Martin and others close to her said.
She rose to all challenges, they said, using to the best of her ability the boundless compassion that never stopped flowing.
“Love,” was the single word Houma attorney Carolyn McNabb, executive director of the Louis Infant Center, uttered when asked to describe Sister Rosario.
Saturday night a colleague of Sister Rosario’s, Sister Carmelita, called Sr. Martin and said she was not doing well. The nun called 911 and she was brought to TGMC’s CCU.
“I asked the doctors pointed questions about the dog bite and the child and the head injury and they told me they were not of the opinion that the initial head injury nor the dog bite had much to do with anything, that this was a consequence of her aging and her illnesses,” St. Martin said, praising the work done on her behalf by Dr. Ralph Bourgeois, Dr. William Ladd, and other physicians. “They told me Monday morning that they did not expect her to last long and that her organs were shutting down.”
At 12:45 p.m. Tuesday the singing of the sisters and the prayers halted, and the entire CCU went silent, St. Martin said.
“No one talked, no one made noise, you could hear a pin drop across the whole place,” St. Martin said. “What was going on was everyone was showing respect, because maybe, just maybe a saint was passing.”
