Catholic woman devotes life to building bridges

She may be small in stature, but Pat Evans’ verve to uplift others is as enormous as her faith.

Her life’s work has united disparate groups. She worked to bring together Muslims and Croats in the war-torn Baltic States. She has been active in issues of significance to Tremé neighborhood associations and to St. Augustine Church. As a nonprofit leadership teacher at the University of New Orleans, she has addressed crime in New Orleans.

Through all her experiences – happy and challenging – she turned to God as her source of strength. She has chosen to live the Gospel message through interaction with others in daily life. 

“My God is a God of harmony,” Evans said, “and I’ll do anything I can do to create harmonious relationships with people.”

Eyes were windows to world

Injustice hit Evans in the face like a brick, even as a young girl. She recalled walking to Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church from her Frenchman Street home and seeing children dressed in tatters and homes in disrepair. She attended a segregated school. 

She was drawn to teaching and received a scholarship to then-Southeastern Louisiana College in Hammond, where she earned degrees in English and education. There, she met her husband, Harry Evans. They moved to Baton Rouge and had three children.

Her expression of injustice took shape as a documentary producer. Over a decade, she chronicled poverty through stories about the downtrodden. 

Human frailty truly hit home in 1979 when her husband succumbed to bipolar disorder.

  “It put me in touch with the pain of people,” Evans said. “It was a great turning point in my life.”

Political activism on a local, national and international level took effect a short time later. In her words, she said, democracies are best when diverse individuals are involved. Through ties established in Washington, D.C., while working on the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign in 1988, she discovered an outlet for activism in the United States Agency for International Development. This agency was building a nonprofit sector in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“I really wanted to learn about struggling democracies and their needs,” she said.

Could not bury the faith

Amid rubble and societal chaos, she found strong Catholicism among the people whose government tried to strip every vestige of their faith.

“People had a lot of sorrow, pain and suffering,” she said. “Survivors were trying to re-establish a life. I saw Catholic churches and their statues destroyed under Communism, yet Catholic mothers would hide religious articles under their dresses to teach their children the faith.”

She saw the fruits of her nonprofit work in the creation of a hospital volunteer program and a university women’s center. 

“It was intense, but once we worked with people they realized that this was really a part of democracy, where people volunteer to rebuild education, housing and health care,” she said.

Evans said she wasn’t fearful in Sarajevo, Bosnia, even with United Nations guards posted on corners. She said she was surrounded by American missionaries and witnessed the caring work of the Catholic Church. She was willing to pay the price to help others.

“I kept my attention on being a Christian and what being a Catholic means,” she said. “We were able to make it work (rebuild the city and bring some of the three million refugees home).”

Through similar work in Cyprus on a United Nations mission, she was able to build bridges between the Turks and the Greeks who were battling at the time. The hardest thing to accomplish in a democracy, she said, is getting people with different views together. She saw positive results through nonprofits toiling with natives for the common good.

“It reset my life to understand that I’ve always been thankful to religion, because there is always pain and suffering in life,” she said.  “The example of Jesus and his pain and suffering gave me a closer understanding of how important the spiritual life is. Jesus gives us an understanding of God and who God is. It is more than the daily life. It made me realize not to personalize any human annoyances. They are going to be there.”

Making a difference at home

After Cyprus, Evans returned home with a desire to form a nonprofit sector in New Orleans. She approached the University of New Orleans and asked them to create a nonprofit leadership course. Having lived what she was suggesting, the then-chancellor suggested she teach it. The “Project for Nonprofit Leadership” was born.

“I’ve been doing this for 10 years,” she said, and classes remain full.

Her goal is to engage students in neighborhood projects that build communities. One project is the Youth Think Tank, where she and students interview and work with 12 inner-city African-American teenagers and law enforcement officials to understand the youths’ plight and carve out solutions together. 

“It’s given us a better understanding of violence,” she said. “And it’s not as drug-  or gang-related as previously thought. It’s more respect-related.”

She said the key to successful nonprofits is going into a neighborhood and working with local people as equal partners for a positive result.

“When I see that happen, that’s what I see as my blessing,” Evans said. “Does it always happen? No. But does it sometimes happen? Yes. Doing something well is not for me; it’s for my faith.”

Getting involved is vital

Seeing fervor for faith across the Atlantic connected her to the struggles that St. Augustine Catholic Church in Tremé endured for its own survival. She again realized that God was directing her to do the world’s work through faith and moved to the neighborhood and got involved.

“No matter what, we believe,” Evans said. “It tells me that the strength of the Catholic Church is indomitable. The sayings of Christ are actions we must take. That’s the path he gives us.

“Our existence is more than the succession of bare facts; it’s the binding element of the world. We adjust to the place we are in the world. The consistency, the everlastingness of it and the modes of adjustment aren’t always easy. Every act leaves us with a deeper impression of God. … This is my life’s work,” Evans said. “My work is my prayer.”

Christine Bordelon can be reached at [email protected].