10-Year Flood Anniversary 2016 - 2026

Dear Abbot Gregory,

I would like to share my memory of the March 11, 2016, Flood:

Your prayers and support are always appreciated by the Monks of Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary College.

The 10-Year Flood Commemorative Reception

Abbot Gregory Boquet, O.S.B.

Justin Fontenot, Seminarian of the Diocese of Lake Charles and President of the Student Government Association

Abbot Justin Brown, O.S.B.

Jennifer Whitehouse, Chief Financial Officer

From Justin Fontenot’s presentation on March 7, 2026,

“In preparing for this day, I wanted to reach out to someone who helped inspire this talk and who had first hand experience during the flood. I reached out to Fr. Michael Beverung, who is now a priest of my diocese, and I will end this talk by sharing what he had to say:

When I was a seminarian at St. Joseph Abbey in 2016, the flood was one of the most formative experiences of my time there. I was on the Abbey Youth Fest team with Father Andy DeRouen, and we had spent months preparing for a festival for 2,500 people. When the flood came, everything changed. The festival had to be canceled at the last minute. The waters rose quickly, we moved our cars to higher ground, and many of us still lost them. I had about two feet of water in my room, and we had to move to the second floor, with some seminarians evacuating entirely. It was a frightening and deeply unsettling time. But what has stayed with me most is not the disruption or the loss. It is the resilience of the community. The seminarians and the monastic community came together in a remarkable way. We adapted with temporary buildings, restructured daily life, and supported one another in very concrete and spiritual ways. That crisis reshaped the physical campus, but even more, it reshaped the culture of the seminary. It deepened fraternity, fostered generosity, and reminded us that vocation is lived not only in classrooms and chapels, but in how we carry one another through hardship.”