Stowe helps bury the dead in Haiti

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Hollywood actress Madeleine Stowe says she has been helping volunteers bury unclaimed bodies in Haiti.

The "Revenge" and "Last of the Mohicans" star blogged for People.com about a recent trip to the country, which is still trying to recover two years after it was devastated by an earthquake.

Much of the actress' time was spent at the General Hospital morgue, working alongside the Rev. Rick Frechette, a Catholic priest and doctor who has dedicated his life to caring for the poor.

"We're about to pull out as many bodies from the morgue's lockers as we can possibly carry in three trucks," Stowe wrote in her blog, which was posted during the weekend on People.com.

"It's a devotion the team performs because of their belief in all human dignity -- where the dead are lost or forgotten with no one to claim them, Rick and his men retrieve their broken bodies and give them a proper burial," she continued. "Raphael and Conan open the first locker, bodies spill across the room, their limbs in all directions, resting atop one another. Each man and woman, some with IVs still in their veins, has a story we'll never know. The babies are the toughest to take in. They rest there, unclaimed, no one to give them passage to the next world. ... For 2 hours we work away, lifting bodies, placing them in clean linen, a new rosary on each chest, then zip their bags. The men beat a rhythm on the walls, singing, willing the dead to be lifted from this earth and sent to a better place. For incomprehensible reasons, I don't want our work to end. There are two more lockers and it seems wrong to stop before each body is pulled away to safety."