Noteworthy in Nola

I’ve meant to go over and really take a look at these two beautiful structures for a long time, but they’re usually shut tight. On St. Patrick’s Day I got lucky- while the marchers were having Mass at St. Mary’s, St. Alphonsus was open and I got a wander around.

These two massive Catholic churches stand across the street from each other- St. Mary’s built by the Germans in 1845, St. Alphonsus by the Irish in 1848. Originally the explanation was the language barrier, but soon things gained a life of their own and it became a competition between the two ethnicities to make their church the best one in town. *

A slideshow and more info after the jump.

At the time that town was Layfette, a New Orleans suburb which would be gobbled up by the greater city in 1852. Long before that happened, the Irish and Germans started racing to raise money to determine which would be the grandest church, with each building under constant construction.

But now, through neighborhood and societal changes, the future of these churches is in doubt. St. Alphonsus was closed in 1978, and its parishioners merged with St. Mary’s. The building sat vacant and steadily deteriorating until 1990 when it was made into an arts and cultural center, then declared a national monument in 1996. Restoring/preserving it has been monumentally expensive, even before it sustained heavy damage from Katrina.

St. Mary’s is still open but not doing as well as one might hope. In an city that was once all Catholic, the citizens are now spread throughout many denominations. Money is tight, and the church parishes are being closed and consolidated as much as possible.

Ironically, St. Mary’s (the original German church) is where the Irish meet on St. Patrick’s day for their mass which receives some local publicity each year. It is also the national shrine to Father Patrick Seelos, beatified in 2000 by Pope John Paul II. Saint Seelos was a German called to minister in the United States. He came to New Orleans in 1866 to help the poor, but told his family he didn’t think he’d be alive very much longer, and he was correct- he died in the great Yellow Fever epidemic of 1867.

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*There was also a Catholic church for the French, Notre Dame de Bon Secours on Jackson Ave between Laurel and Constance streets, which is still owned by the Redemptorists, though no longer consecrated ground. However, there is no documentation that the French participated in any of the competition the other two did.

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