FATHER Rommel Tolentino is referred to as the Ebay priest for his creative ways of fixing the church he’s a pastor at after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit the Lake Charles, Louisiana area.
In 2006, when Hurricane Katrina hit the southern part of Louisiana, one of the places affected was Lake Charles, about 300 miles west of New Orleans.
There the Diocese of Lake Charles took in evacuees from Hurricane Katrina but a month later they had to evacuate when Hurricane Rita hit the area. Four parishes, four mission chapels and the Catholic Service Center were all destroyed, according to reports.
Tolentino, a pastor at the Diocese of Lake Charles, had to find a resourceful way of rebuilding one of the churches.
A year before the hurricanes, he had just been ordained a priest for the Diocese of Lake Charles at the age of 32. A few years later, he had to undertake a very important role in not only rebuilding the spiritual lives of those affected by the hurricanes but also renovate the church structure of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church.
According to the PhilippineRomanCatholic blog, “This church parish has been flooded and completely rebuilt several times. The current church building is not old; it is a modern, plain, brick functional structure with absolutely no architectural features. It’s basically a rectangle with a pitched roof. Thanks to the opportunity afforded by the last hurricane, Fr.Tolentino took a scant budget, a great heart and mind, and many volunteer hours, and literally had everything here almost built or fabricated using materials that were available…
“Considering the limited funds Fr. Rommel had to work with and the pre-existing structure, he did an amazing job of enhancing the beauty of St. Peter’s.”
It was a community effort led by Tolentino to rebuild St. Peter the Apostle Catholic church.
According to his bio, Father Rommel was born in the Philippines. Despite being the product of a comprehensive Catholic education, having attended elementary school through college, and being raised in a ‘very Catholic environment’, Tolentino says he never thought about the priesthood during the first twenty-six years of his life.
He worked as a physical therapist “until he felt God’s call and began studying for the priesthood.”
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