Some church buildings in the Rockaways sustained water damage from Hurricane Sandy, but many parishioners’ lives were turned upside down when more than 100 homes burned to the ground in the oceanside community of Breezy Point. The storm knocked out power to huge swathes of the nation’s most densely populated region, swamped New York’s subway system and submerged streets in Manhattan’s financial district. The normal Mass obligation for Thursday, Nov. 1, also was suspended in the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn because of the danger of travel. Clockwise, from top left: people stand among homes destroyed by fire and the effects of Hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point Oct. 30; Bishop Nicholas Dimarzio and Msgr. Jamie Gigantiello review the damage to homes in Breezy Point; Bishop DiMarzio prays with Sisters Patricia Chellius, C.S.J.; Paul Maurita, C.S.J., and Patricia Walsh, C.S.J., who live in the convent at St. Francis DeSales parish, Belle Harbor, which suffered water damage; Father Joseph Cunningham, administrator of St. Andrew the Apostle parish, Bay Ridge, saws limbs from fallen branches outside the parish house in the wake of Hurricane Sandy; onlookers view a fallen tree in Bay Ridge’s Owl’s Head Park.
