In his fight to save his Uptown church, university photographer Harold Baquet found himself on the roof of Our Lady of Good Counsel, trying to convince a police officer to arrest him.

Baquet was one of several parishioners forced out of their churches that day by the New Orleans Police Department for protesting the closure of the churches.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans announced in October that Good Counsel and other churches were closed in an economic move to consolidate parishes. In all, 36 churches have been closed. Members of Good Counsel on Louisiana Avenue, along with other parishes, began to hold 24-hour vigils in shifts at their churches to protest and prevent more closings.

Baquet said he feels the Archdiocese’s biggest mistake is trying to create “mega-parishes,” which would move away from the first-century concept of the Christian community.

“We’re experiencing the love of Christ through the love of each other,” he said. “The church is finally rediscovering this concept. And when you have a mega-community with several thousand families, you lose that. You lose the intimacy, you lose the family relationships that occur.”

Baquet was originally cited with criminal trespassing, and the charges were dropped.
He has been undergoing chemotherapy treatment, but he continued to take part in the vigils and serve as one of the handymen for Good Counsel.

Baquet was at the church not as part of his shift, but to barricade the door that New Orleans police would eventually break down to reach parishioners.

“We had no idea they would come at us like this,” he said.

Before police arrived on the morning of Jan. 6, Baquet was examining a hiding place. Officers had entered the church before, and he wanted to make sure he had a place to avoid arrest if it happened again. He went up through the bell tower, up “seven little rickety chicken ladders” to the roof. Baquet came down to get his jacketand a hammer, and as he was coming back he heard the doors being bashed in.

“So I ran back upstairs, and I had just come down all those chicken ladders and immediately had to run back up. I was soaking wet, I was sweating, I was tired.”

Police didn’t find him immediately, and Baquet said his cell phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. When police announced they suspected someone was still inside, parishioners guessed it was him.
Baquet said police probably guessed where he was when his hat flew off his head from the roof.
When an officer climbed up through the bell tower, Baquet said the officer made no attempt to be polite, threatening to handcuff him and drag him down.

Baquet eventually responded aggressively, “Man, what do you want to do?”
“And all the sudden, the look of horror came over his face,” Baquet said. “Because as big as he was, a little square with a hundred foot sheer drop, we were equal. And he didn’t know whether I was going to jump or maybe I wanted to wrestle with him.”

The officer began to descend back down those steps, but Baquet said he put his hand on his shoulder and said, “Hey man, I’m messing with you. Come on, let’s get off of this roof.”
“After that, he was a complete gentleman,” Baquet said.

The officer spent about an hour trying to talk Baquet out of being arrested and leaving the premises instead.
“I looked at the city attorney who approved this action, and I said, ‘Man, I recognize you. Where’d you go to law school?” And he said Loyola Law. The young African-American lady with him said, ‘Yeah, both of us. We’re sorry Mr. Harold.'”

Baquet finally came down under the impression that he was being arrested.
 Carrying his bucket of tools, Baquet was led into the police car praying the ‘Hail Holy Queen’ prayer.”It’s a wonderful prayer in times of distress,” he said.
Rather than arresting him, though, police dropped Baquet off at his house, and he immediately returned to the church.

NOPD did not return calls or e-mails for request for comment.

Baquet said Good Counsel is one of the most ethnically and racially diverse parishes in New Orleans, and this lack of racial barriers is one of the main reasons the parish is dear to his heart and feels like part of his family.

“Something really beautiful arose from it,” he said.

Still, Archbishop Alfred Hughes continues to emphasize that the archdiocese must downsize to survive population changes, structural damage caused by Katrina and a shortage of priests.

KEEPING THE FAITH

The Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, said in an e-mail to the Maroon that he respects Baquet’s right to protest and express his opinion, and it wouldn’t affect Baquet’s job in any way.

Baquet, a photographer, has worked at Loyola for 20 years. He began as a freelancer and founder of Zone One Photographic Services, which supplied African-American media with photos. After that, he worked as a city photographer for New Orleans, which is how he met his wife, Cheron Brylski, who also worked for the city.

“Harold’s faith is extremely strong. A big part of this is his personal commitment to his community and to his own spiritual faith,” she said.

“This is our neighborhood center. When we moved Uptown, the first people we met were through the church. When we found out he had cancer, the support we got from that community as well as from Loyola has been very strong,” she said.

Baquet said he learned a lot about the realities of civil disobedience at Loyola when he covered one of the classes of visiting professor and peace activist the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., as they protested in the Hale Boggs Federal Building on Poydras Street.
“Some of the things I learned there we were able to apply,” he said.

“He feels like it’s his personal mission to fight back,” said Brylski. “He’s always been a little bit of a rebel and an advocate. Just by his nature he stands up against things when he thinks they’re wrong.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at [email protected].