You can't tell the story of New Orleans without its Black Catholics

National Geographic

15-05-2025

The revelation that Pope Leo XIV has Louisiana Creole roots shines a light on a community of Catholics that has shaped New Orleans, from a famous Voodoo priestess to the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz. A member of the Treme Brass Band plays during a concert marking the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Concert at the historically black St. Augustine Catholic Church in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded in 1841, St. Augustine is the oldest Black parish in the United States and was the place of worship for some of the city's most influential historical figures. Photograph byThe election of Pope Leo XIV as the first American pontiff—and the subsequent revelation that he has Louisiana Creole roots—shines new light on a city long known for its vibrant mix of cultures and traditions. Indeed, it is impossible to speak of New Orleans without including the story of its Black Catholics.
Black Catholicism in the Crescent City can be traced all the way back to the 15th-century European colonization of West Africa, the homeland of many of those brought against their will centuries later to Louisiana as part of the slave trade.
'When we talk about Black Catholics, we had people from the Kingdom of Kongo who were Catholic even before they came here,' says Ansel Augustine, a New Orleans native and the assistant director of African American Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In New Orleans, the Catholicism practiced by French and Spanish settlers melded with the Catholicism and spiritual practices of the African diaspora, Augustine says. 'Thus, the birthing of the Black Catholic realities of New Orleans.' A group of boys and girls pose for a group portrait with St. Louis Cathedral in the background in New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1975. It is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. Photograph by Richard Laird/FPG/Today,the Archdiocese ofNew Orleans has one of the largest African-American populations for U.S. Catholic dioceses. But more than that, the city has been shaped by its Catholic community. Black Catholics played a role in some of the most important chapters of New Orleans history—from the origins of jazz to the earliest Black schools in America to the civil rights movement.
Then there's Mardi Gras, the weeks-long Carnival celebration before the solemn Catholic season of Lent. While the latter is often more explicitly associated with religion, Carnival—with its Black Masking Indians, second line parades, living 'baby dolls,' and skeletons—is a noticeably Afrocentric moment on the Church calendar.
Though not well known outside of New Orleans, these are the stories of the Catholics whose lives displayed their community's commitment to faith, justice, and innovation. How the 'Code Noir' shaped the birth of Black Catholicism
The earliest colonial rulers in Louisiana were the Catholic kingdoms of France and Spain—and they tended to view marriage and procreation in terms of class.
'There was no blanket term of 'Black.' We don't really see that until the Americans take over,' says David Robinson-Morris, a Black Catholic scholar and consultant in New Orleans with REImaginelution.
'The French had the Code Noir, which dictated how people of color could move about in the world and in society.'
Under these laws, interracial marriage was generally prohibited, mostly to perpetuate slavery and maintain an economic hierarchy. People of mixed race often intermarried within what became known as the 'Creole' community for reasons that became increasingly tied to wealth and status. Born in 1801, Marie Catherine Laveau was both a voodoo priestess and a devout Catholic. Her teachings helped preserve African spirituality in New Orleans as it melded together with European Catholicism. Photograph by IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo
One workaround was the system of plaçage, which allowed white men of status to cohabitate and procreate with Black Creole women outside of recognized Catholic marriages. This system is what produced many of the multiracial Black Catholics who came to shape the city's early history.
Many well-known Catholics in New Orleans were of similar descent. Take the famous Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, for example. She's best known for leading a robust, underground interreligious practice that helped preserve African spirituality in New Orleans. But she was also a lifelong practicing Catholic who had her children baptized in the Church.
Then there was the philanthropist Marie Couvent, who left her wealth to a Catholic school for the indigent founded in 1840. Later backed by the Creole educator and entrepreneur Thomy Lafon, it was the first community school devoted to Black children in the Deep South.
Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll Morton' Lamothe, another devout Catholic, helped pioneer the musical style later known as jazz in the city's red light district, also known as 'Storyville.' His earliest compositions came in the early 1900s, including the 'Jelly Roll Blues' and 'King Porter Stomp.' Devotion to education and living Catholic values
Others in New Orleans made their mark through explicitly religious service tied to the Church.
One standout was Henriette DeLille, a free-born woman who resisted the prevailing plaçage system. Her devout religious faith led her to not only reject her suitors, but also to found the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1836, an order of nuns dedicated to serving the poor and enslaved. They opened one of the nation's oldest senior care centers, Lafon Nursing Facility, in 1842 and one of the city's oldest schools, St. Mary's Academy, in 1867.
'Mother Henriette has left a legacy that can't be disputed,' says Alicia Costa, who has served as superior general of the Holy Family Sisters since 2022. 'We're still working and Henriette is really our model.'
DeLille is now on the path to sainthood, making her one of the most emblematic figures among New Orleans Black Catholics and the larger region, who invoke her name weekly in an official prayer distributed by the local archdiocese.
St. Katharine Drexel, a white Philadelphia heiress who founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, opened the nation's first Black Catholic institution of higher education, Xavier University of Louisiana, in 1925. It has since gone on to produce some of the nation's most prominent Black achievers, and more Black medical professionals than almost any other school in America
The Josephites, another Catholic religious community founded to serve African Americans, also has a long history in New Orleans. Their priests and religious brothers have served in the city since 1909 and founded a historic all-boys Black Catholic high school, St. Augustine, in 1951.
'The Josephites served in the Greater New Orleans Urban League, even as president, and fought for equal housing and job opportunities,' says Roderick Coates, a Josephite priest in Louisiana. 'They helped found Christopher Housing for seniors and low-income people [and] served on the Board of Education for New Orleans Public Schools.' Civil rights and the Catholic Church
Catholic activism characterized much of the city's presence in the Black liberation struggle, especially out of Tremé—the nation's oldest Black neighborhood.
The civil rights attorney A.P. Tureaud, Sr., battled Jim Crow from his office at the headquarters of the Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary, a Black Catholic fraternal order of which he was a member.
A mile away, local restaurateurs Leah and Edgar 'Dooky' Chase II—both Catholic—hosted Martin Luther King, Jr., and other movement activists for closed-door planning meetings. President Norman C. Francis of Xavier University in New Orleans shakes hands with Pope John Paul II after appearing before the United Nations committee against apartheid in a special session to pay tribute to the late Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1980. He was the first Black president of the school, which itself was the nation's first Black Catholic institution of higher education. Photograph by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
Homer Plessy—of the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson that upheld Louisiana's law on 'separate but equal' facilities—resisted segregation as a Catholic connected to the city's most historic Black church, St. Augustine.
Norman C. Francis, a Black Catholic and dean of men at Xavier University of Louisiana, also helped play a role in the Civil Rights Movement, offering a dormitory as a hub for the Freedom Riders in 1961 amid white supremacist violence in the city.
'All of this is connected with our Black Catholic heritage and our faith, telling us to use spaces, places, gifts, and strength to create a more just society,' says Augustine.
While Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reshaped much of New Orleans and its tangible Black Catholic heritage, the city has remained resilient.
'Remember, New Orleans is older than the country. It is a city in America, but it's not an American city,' says Robinson-Morris.
'We're talking about African culture, literally from the motherland, colliding with Afro-Caribbean culture. We're talking about French culture and Native American and Spanish culture, and all of the various ways those cultures are expressed.'
It is precisely this sort of cultural and ethnic admixture that has come to bear with the new Pope Leo XIV, whose ancestry exhibits a typical New Orleans ambiguity that is still American in its own way.
While he has not publicly spoken on the details of his mother's Black and Catholic Creole beginnings in New Orleans, it is clear that the background of the first American pope is as complex—and as providential—as the country's own genesis.
'Long before he was the pope, when he was just a priest and a cardinal, he mentioned that one of the reasons to a vocation was because all the neighborhood priests were always in and out of his house because they liked his mom's cooking,' says Jari Honora, the genealogist who discovered the pope's Creole roots.
'Now we know why, because his mom—both maternal and paternal—was straight out of New Orleans.' Nate Tinner-Williams is cofounder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger, an independent, nonprofit digital media publication covering stories of interest to African-American Catholics. He is a master's student in theology at Xavier University of Louisiana's Institute for Black Catholic Studies and a contributing writer for the Boston Globe.