When Father Kevin Wm. Wildes, president of Loyola University in New Orleans, came to Los Angeles Nov. 3 to meet with his 47 former students who are now taking classes at Loyola Marymount University and Pasadena Community College, his message couldn't have been more to the point:

"Get ready to come home. Spring semester starts Jan. 9."

In fact, the 50-year-old Jesuit has been delivering that same message to Loyola students scattered around the country by Hurricane Katrina during cross-country trips he reports have "morphed" since Sept. With his displaced flock now at some 170 universities, Father Wildes has spent more time on the road than Charles Kuralt, making pit stops mostly at Jesuit Universities and colleges to speak to current students as well as alumni.

"The morale of the kids has its ups and downs," he told The Tidings in a phone interview last week. "But I think overall they're doing very well. I'm encouraged because there seems to be a real interest and determination about coming back. I had prepared for the worst, but we've got some really good indicators about students coming back."

Father Wildes says Loyola was "very fortunate." Although the roof of the athletic complex was badly damaged, the university lost no buildings, with flooding stopping literally a few blocks from the campus. Still, in a broken city, Loyola had to be closed just as the fall semester was beginning.

But as many as 60 percent of faculty and staff had their homes damaged or destroyed. So Father Wildes --- a bioethicist by training --- immediately committed $30 million to continue paying these workers throughout the shut-down semester.

"One, it was just the right thing to do," he said. "And, second, aside from the buildings, Loyola is its people. That seems trite to say, but it's true. And if you don't take care of these people the students might come back, but what are they going to come back to?"

Loyola's president puts the blame for the slow federal response after the hurricane squarely on the shoulders of President George Bush and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), which he calls a "dysfunctional" group.

He's also dismayed that the administration's final emergency funding request was a "lot smaller" than expected and contained no money for institutes of higher education. And he points out that, to date, FEMA hasn't fulfilled its promise of providing housing for the university's faculty and staff.

When it comes to the future of new New Orleans, Father Wildes says he walks a middle line. He doesn't want to have a gentrified city where minorities and the poor are squeezed out, pointing out that since its origins the city has been one of the most naturally diverse metropolis in the United States.

"So you don't want to lose that because it'll be a New Orleans without a soul, so to speak," he observed. "But on the other hand, I don't want to build a city which has got poor people just for the sake of having poor people. So I worry when 'limousine liberals' start talking, 'It's nice to have some poor people around.'

"We have to build a city that has a better education system that serves the poor, so that they're not left in their poverty," he stressed. "The public school system here has been a disaster."

He feels the same mixed emotions about rebuilding the troubled 9th Ward, one of the city's poorest sections that was completely flooded. It would be a mistake to rebuild it as it was, he says, letting houses be constructed right up to the levee.

But Father Wildes' greatest concern is that many of New Orleans' working class families won't return to the Big Easy now that they've gotten a taste of a better life --- especially when it comes to education --- for their children and themselves.

"A lot of these people had no idea that your kids can go to school and actually learn to read and write," he quipped, before adding, "The theme I keep stressing is resurrection. Resurrection is about the fulfillment of the promise of life.

"I do think it's possible," he mused. "I also think it's very possible that we can actually blow it. Or that it will be somewhere in between."