Being Part of Building a Community

Father Michael Kavanaugh

Everybody who works at the Imperial Sugar refinery at Port Wentworth, Georgia, knows of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. You cannot miss it – the small church is located across the street from the refinery entrance, and, like the Baptist Church down the street and others, is an important part of the community.

The church was built by and for settlers from Louisiana who constructed the Port Wentworth sugar refinery. Its front door view is down the live oak-carvassed driveway to the refinery. Our Lady of Lourdes has provided spiritual mentoring of workers, leaders, their families and the community for more than 90 years, and played a meaningful role during the February 2008 emergency, caring for grieving families and those waiting for news of loved ones.

Father Michael Kavanaugh is pastor. He grew up in the Savannah area and often speaks of the sense of community.

“It’s a little unfortunate,” says Fr. Kavanaugh, “but sometimes it takes a tragedy or a crisis or trauma of some kind to make us focus in on what’s truly valuable and what’s not.”

He believes there is a greater awareness today among people at the refinery, Port Wentworth and the entire Savannah of how cooperation is an essential element of surviving in a community.

“We live in our own little neighborhoods, we go to this church, we go to that club, we have our own family but the explosion at the refinery (in February 2008) reminded us on how much we rely on each other. It lessened isolation. It reduced isolation. It teaches who we are, that we are part of a community. There is an inter-relatedness that is easy to miss unless you are made to look at it.”

Sitting in a pew in his church, Fr. Kavanaugh says, “There’s more to living than just taking care of me, myself and I. We have to struggle to maintain a sense of community, not in bad times but also in good times.”

Father Michael Kavanaugh

And, he cites the famous “City on a Hill” sermon by John Winthrop in 1630, saying it is just as applicable today as it was nearly 280 years ago:

“We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.”

John Winthrop, 1630

Fr. Kavanaugh believes his own community has today become more of a beacon on a hill.