A priest and a friend

I first met him in Chauvin, the first time I ever came there for a spring boat blessing. So you are talking at this point of about 20 years.

Msgr. Frederic Brunet had already served as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Chauvin for longer than that when we met, which makes his span at its helm about 42 years to date.

In this line of work you meet a lot of people, priests and other religious folk included. My grandmother, the late Domenica Tarulli of New York, used to tell my mom that priests are like the fingers on your had.

“All of them are on the same hand,” she would say. “But they are all different, none of them are all the same.”

Like many other things Mom and Grandma have said, this has held true both in terms of those priests I have known personally and those I have come to know because I was working on a story.

Most are friendly, many are kind even to journalists, and all are men and so therefore very much able, like most men and women, to disappoint.

Msgr. Brunet is not and has never been a source of disappointment.

For years I would talk with him as he prepared to board one of the big double-riggers in Chauvin, aspergillium in hand and a black-billed, white captain’s hat aloft, white robes flowing and a gold alb perfectly in place.

He would speak of the hardships the people of his parish endured, about the shrimp market, and how the imports were taking food from the mouths of his flock.

And he never tired of talking about it.

Chauvin, you must understand, is a magical place still, despite the intrusion of Yankees like myself and a lot of other foreigners. It is the place where the late Joseph Billiot, said to have been the last traiteur on Bayou Petit Caillou, saw angels in his back yard. It is the place I was dispatched to because people saw crosses reflected in their bathroom window.

“Why is it not possible,” Msgr. Brunet had said of the crosses. Why, he wondered, do we find it so easy to believe that people have seen evil things, or that they have seen ghosts, and immediately find impossible that a miracle somehow associated with good has occurred.

The logic was impressive to me, a person who at this stage of his life believes everything and nothing.

Now Msgr. Brunet, that is someone about whom you can believe a lot of good things. He has that feather-light touch when he touches your shoulder to emphasize something, so light you would think an angel had stepped in to make the point.

But most impressive to me has always been the love he expresses for his people, and the faith they have expressed regarding him.

Over his 42 years at St. Joseph, Msgr. Brunet has Christened the new babies and buried their relatives, parents, grandparents and sometimes those children themselves, whether as children or adults.

He has watched the culture decline in his community, and seen how the more rules they put in place to take fisheries away, the more poor the people have become.

Boys who once might have gill-netted with their fathers or maybe shrimped with them were smoking crack or beating girlfriends or stealing from the Dock’n’Shop or the Piggly Wiggly. Msgr. Brunet saw a lot of these transformations.

But all the while he preached belief in community and in family. And of course he showed up for those boat blessings, even at times when he wasn’t feeling so well.

Last month Msgr. Brunet was not present for the blessing of the Chauvin fleet. He might not be present for a lot more. He hasn’t been so well a lot more lately, but that comes and goes. Monday he was feeling just fine. And those who are close with him say he listens to what the doctors tell him to do.

He has been replaced at St. Joseph’s by the Rev. Todd Wilmer, whom the faithful there have come to know over the years. But Msgr. Brunet, now living in Thibodaux, will still be missed.

As a gentle man who to me embodied all I was ever told to be good about the Catholic Church, I will certainly miss him myself.