The priest: ‘Once you have experienced New Orleans, it follows you’

As the Rev. Jerome LeDoux tried to say goodbye this month, the duties of Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church were still calling.

He needed to get paperwork to the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth office, and well-wishers were dropping by the church rectory to see him off.

At 85, LeDoux was moving from Fort Worth, where he had led Our Mother of Mercy since 2006, to retire in Bay St. Louis, Miss. It wasn’t easy to leave Fort Worth, just as it wasn’t easy to leave New Orleans.

“That bond is very strong,” LeDoux said. “Over nine years, it just gets stronger. At some point, it just feels terrible that you’re going to move.”

In 2005, LeDoux rode out Hurricane Katrina in his former church, the historic St. Augustine Catholic Parish in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. A vegan, he survived on pasta and marinara sauce for eight days. He also became embroiled in a fight to save the church after the storm.

St. Augustine, which dates to 1842, stayed dry. It is the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the United States and was one of the first churches where freed slaves and whites could worship together.

On the Sunday after Katrina, LeDoux said 13 people showed up at the church, seeking refuge.

“There were 13 souls who came,” LeDoux said. “Most of them weren’t even Catholic. They just figured, ‘Well, it’s church.’ So I went in and sat down at the piano. Then I beckoned them to come up into the sanctuary where they would be close to the piano and then we sang a bit of Amazing Grace.”

LeDoux asked everyone to “express what was in their hearts” and say a prayer before the small service ended.

“As mysteriously appeared, so did they disappear,” LeDoux said.

While the church survived the storm, its future became uncertain. Six months after Katrina, then-Archbishop Alfred Hughes announced that it would close.

LeDoux was removed, but protesters occupied the church — boarding themselves inside — to keep it from closing.

“I got kicked out,” LeDoux said. “I had differences with the archbishop.”

After that, LeDoux said, he received two phone calls from the archbishop urging him to intervene and ask the protesters to leave.

“He called and said, ‘Jerome, tell the young people to leave the rectory,’” LeDoux recalled. “I told the archbishop, ‘They’re following their conscience. I will not intervene.’”

The New Orleans Archdiocese eventually granted a probationary period before allowing St. Augustine to stay open. The struggle to save the church was chronicled in the documentary Shake the Devil Off. LeDoux also wrote a firsthand account in his book War of the Pews.

After coming to Fort Worth, LeDoux invigorated the city’s only African-American Catholic parish and attracted some former Louisiana and Mississippi residents to join his congregation.

Longtime members of Our Mother of Mercy were sad to see him go.

“I’m a cradle Catholic, 571/2 years,” Carolyn Smith said. “Trust me, we have never had anybody like him. He’s a true shepherd. He’s just unselfish. I can’t say enough. From the day he stepped in here, he was on a first-name basis with everybody. He never took a day off.”

At the St. Augustine Seminary in Bay St. Louis, where LeDoux was ordained in 1957, he plans to work on two books and continue his weekly column, Reflections on Life, which began in 1969 and is syndicated in several Catholic weeklies.

He still misses New Orleans.

“It’s hypnotic,” LeDoux said. “There’s no other place like it. Once you have experienced New Orleans, it follows you. The folks at Our Mother of Mercy always chuckled because they could always hear New Orleans through me.”

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 11:09 AM with the headline "The priest: ‘Once you have experienced New Orleans, it follows you’."