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Hurricane Dean does minor damage to Detroit parish in Cayman Islands

Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO of The Michigan Catholic
Published August 24, 2007

Detroit — Fr. Paul Ballien learned to be prepared for many things as a priest. Harvesting coconuts from church property in preparation for a potential hurricane wasn't one of them.

But it was just one of the things he did as the pastor of St. Ignatius Parish in George Town, Grand Cayman Island, as Hurricane Dean loomed.

And he did learn the art of leaning from a ladder and slicing down the fruit by using a pole with a knife at the end. "If the winds are over 100 miles an hour, you don't want those flying around," he said Sunday afternoon.

Overnight Sunday, the winds kicked up and the hurricane veered off toward Mexico leaving only minimal damage to the grounds of the parish in the Caribbean Sea. It has been a part of the Archdiocese of Detroit since Cardinal Adam Maida agreed to take pastoral responsibility for it in 2000 at the request of Pope John Paul II.

"It passed about 100 miles to the south," Fr. Ballien said Tuesday, after almost two months of living on the island. He most recently had served as pastor of St. Basil the Great Parish in Eastpointe. "The only damage we had were some smaller trees and limbs and branches broken off. All we got were tropical storm winds 40 to 65 miles an hour – and this was going on for about 12 hours."

He said the winds died down about 4:30 p.m. Monday and while the water was turned off, they never lost electricity. As the storm passed, he and associate pastor Pallottine Fr. Alexander Crasta "just read, ate and watched TV."

Since he's weathered his first hurricane threat, his plans are to uncover all the furniture they put on blocks and wrapped in plastic, take down the boards for the windows, use the rest of the water they stored and figure out what to do with the coconuts. "We must have 40 or 50 around here now," he said.