Kim Boudreaux, CEO of the Catholic Charities of Acadiana in Louisiana and a member of Legatus’ Lafayette-Acadiana Chapter, has enjoyed the privilege of serving God’s poor since taking on the role in 2005, a week after Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. 

One of Boudreaux’s many undertakings is organizing burials for deceased individuals who have gone “unclaimed.” 

“A former client of Catholic Charities named Brian passed away in 2009 and went unclaimed. I assumed he had been buried by his family but learned six months after his death that he was still at the morgue and remained unclaimed,” Boudreaux recalled. 

“Once I began asking questions, I learned that there was no process to bury those in our community who went unclaimed. I asked if they would allow me to claim every person who had been left unclaimed. I felt it was important that each person was claimed by name and offered the dignity of a proper burial,” she said. “It took the next three years to complete the paperwork, but in 2012 we hosted the first burial of the unclaimed, and we interred 137 people, including fetuses.” 

The diocesan cathedral agreed to host an annual funeral, allocated a portion of their cemetery for the unclaimed, and also constructed a columbarium for them. A Mass and burial of the unclaimed is now held annually on All Souls Day, and more than 500 unclaimed people have been interred to date.

“Our faith compels us to respect the dignity of all human life, from conception through natural death. We often focus on the important issues related to the right to life and can easily forget about the threats to the dignity of life in other vulnerable stages of life,” Boudreaux said.

We have a duty to protect, honor, and respect the lives of those among us, especially the most vulnerable. In a way, it is a measure of the authenticity of our faith.

Catholic Charities of Acadiana also feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless among many other critical services. “We serve hundreds of people each day through our humble doors,” said Boudreaux. “We consider these corporal works of mercy a form of evangelization, as we bear witness to the mercy of Christ to those who may have never heard the good news.”

By Maura Keller

Reprinted with permission of Legatus. This article originally appeared on their website on October 1, 2023.