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ACLU: No 'Jesus Memorial' for Katrina Victims
The American Civil Liberties Union is objecting to plans for a hurricane memorial in St. Bernard Parish that will feature a cross bearing a likeness of the face of Jesus.
In a letter to the parish, Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Joe Cook said the plan violates the constitutional standards of church-state separation because the memorial would be located on a public waterway. Cook asked the parish to erect a religiously neutral symbol.
But Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said he sees nothing improper about the memorial, which will be mounted near the shoreline of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet at Shell Beach.
The cross and accompanying monument listing the names of the 129 parish residents who died in Hurricane Katrina will be put on private land and are being financed with donations, Rodriguez said.
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The Parish Council voted several months ago to erect a monument, but at the time did not offer specific plans. The parish recently announced plans to dedicate the memorial on Aug. 29, the one-year anniversary of hurricane.
The stainless steel cross will be 13 feet tall and seven feet wide and will be lighted.
Rodriguez and others like the idea of putting the monument along the banks of the MRGO, because that waterway, dug by the federal government as a shipping shortcut in the 1960s, is widely blamed for much of the deadly flooding that accompanied Hurricane Katrina. Over the years erosion has widened the outlet, so the bank on which the cross will be erected is on privately owned land, Rodriguez said.
The ACLU believes a storm memorial is appropriate, but the parish's plan is "still all very questionable," Cook said.
"I think there is official government involvement with the endorsement and advancement of this clearly religious symbol," Cook said.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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