Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans

The Archdiocese of New Orleans (Archidioecesis Novae Aureliae, Archidiocèse de la Nouvelle-Orléans, Arquidiócesis de Nueva Orleans) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical division of the Catholic Church spanning Jefferson (except Grand Isle), Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, and Washington civil parishes of southeastern Louisiana. It is the second to the Archdiocese of Baltimore in age among the present dioceses in the United States, having been elevated to the rank of diocese on April 25, 1793, during Spanish colonial rule.

Its patron saints are the virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor and St. Louis, King of France, and Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis is its mother church with St. Patrick's Church serving as a pro-cathedral. The archdiocese has 137 church parishes administered by 387 priests (including those belonging to religious institutes), 187 permanent deacons, 84 brothers, and 432 sisters. There are 372,037 Catholics on the census of the archdiocese, 36% of the total population of the area. The current head of the archdiocese is Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans reflects the cultural diversity of the city of New Orleans and the surrounding (civil) parishes. As a major port, the city has attracted immigrants from around the world. When French and Spanish Catholics ruled the city, some encouraged enslaved Africans to adopt Christianity, resulting in a large population of African American Catholics with deep heritage in the area. Later, Irish, Italian, Polish, Bavarian, and other immigrants have brought their heritage and customs to the archdiocese. The last quarter of the 20th century also brought many Vietnamese Catholics from South Vietnam to settle in the city. New waves of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Cuba also have added to the Catholic population.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans is also a metropolitan see of a province that spans the entire U.S. state of Louisiana. Its suffragan sees are the Diocese of Alexandria, Diocese of Baton Rouge, Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana, Diocese of Lake Charles, and Diocese of Shreveport. the archdiocese is under chapter 11 bankruptcy due to the mounting cost of litigation from sexual abuse cases, and covid.

History
The Catholic Church has had a presence in New Orleans since before the founding of the city by the French in 1718. Missionaries served the French military outposts and worked among the native peoples. The area was then under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Quebec. In 1721 Fr. Francis-Xavier de Charlevoix, S.J., made a tour of New France from the Lakes to the Mississippi, and visiting New Orleans, he describes "a little village of about one hundred cabins dotted here and there, a large wooden warehouse in which I said Mass, a chapel in course of construction and two storehouses".

In 1722 the Capuchins were assigned ecclesiastical responsibility for the Lower Mississippi Valley, while the Jesuits maintained a mission, based in New Orleans, to serve the indigenous peoples. The Jesuit vicar-general returned to France to recruit priests and also persuaded the Ursulines of Rouen to assume charge of a hospital and school. The royal patent authorizing the Ursulines to found a convent in Louisiana was issued September 18, 1726. Ten religious from various cities sailed from Hennebont on January 12, 1727, and reached New Orleans on August 6. As the convent was not ready, the governor gave up his residence to them. They opened a hospital for the care of the sick and a school for poor children.

France surrendered New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi to the Spanish under the Treaty of Paris of 1763. From then until 1783, East Florida and West Florida were under British control, but both Florida colonies reverted to Spain as part of the Peace of Paris in 1783. Pope Pius VI erected the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas encompassing the pioneer parishes of New Orleans and Louisiana and both Florida colonies on April 25, 1793, taking its territory from the Diocese of San Cristobal de la Habana, based in Havana, Cuba. The diocese originally encompassed the entire territory of the Louisiana Purchase, from the Gulf of Mexico to British North America, as well as the Florida peninsula and the Gulf Coast. This date of erection makes the present Archdiocese of New Orleans the second oldest Catholic diocese in the present United States after the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which the same pope had erected as the Diocese of Baltimore on November 6, 1789. The new diocese encompassed the area claimed by Spain as Louisiana, which was all the land draining into the Mississippi River from the west, as well as Spanish territory to the east of the river in modern-day Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida

In April 1803, the United States purchased Louisiana from France, which had in 1800 forced Spain to retrocede the territory in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso. The United States took formal possession of New Orleans on December 20, 1803, and of Upper Louisiana on March 10, 1804. John Carroll, the Bishop of Baltimore, served as apostolic administrator of the diocese from 1805 to 1812. The diocese became a suffragan of the see of Baltimore, which had been elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese in 1808, during this period. Archbishop Carroll's successor as apostolic administrator would eventually be the diocese's first resident bishop of the 19th century.

In 1823, Pope Pius VII appointed Joseph Rosati to the office of coadjutor bishop of the diocese. At the diocesan bishop's suggestion, the diocesan bishop was based in New Orleans while his coadjutor was based in St. Louis.

On 19 August 1825, Pope Leo XII erected the Apostolic Vicariate of Alabama and the Floridas, taking its territory from the Archdiocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. Although the two Florida territories were no longer part of the diocese, he did not change its title. But soon after, Bishop Rosati abruptly resigned the office of coadjutor bishop during a trip to Rome after which the Vatican decided to split the diocese again, making St. Louis a separate see. On 18 July 1826, the same pope
 * Erected the Diocese of St. Louis, taking its territory from the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas and the Diocese of Durango,
 * Erected the Apostolic Vicariate of Mississippi, taking its territory from the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas,
 * Changed the title of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas to Diocese of New Orleans, and
 * Appointed Bishop Rosati as apostolic administrator of both the Diocese of New Orleans and the new Diocese of St. Louis.

On 19 July 1850, Pope Pius IX erected the Apostolic Vicariate of the Indian Territory East of the Rocky Mountains. On the same day, he elevated the Diocese of New Orleans to a metropolitan archdiocese.

On 29 July 1953, Pope Pius IX erected the Diocese of Natchitoches, taking its territory from the archdiocese and making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan see.

On 11 January 1918, Pope Benedict XV erected the Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana, taking its territory from the archdiocese making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan see.

On 22 July 1961, Pope John XXIII erected the Diocese of Baton Rouge, taking its territory from the archdiocese and making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan see.

On 2 March 1977, Pope Paul VI erected the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, taking its territory from the archdiocese and making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan see.

In its long history, the archdiocese and the city of New Orleans have survived several major disasters, including several citywide fires, a British invasion, the American Civil War, multiple yellow fever epidemics, anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism, the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915, Segregation, Hurricane Betsy, and an occasional financial crisis, not to mention Hurricane Katrina. Each time, the archdiocese rebuilt damaged churches and rendered assistance to the victims of every disaster. More recently, the church has faced an increased demand for churches in the suburbs and a decline in attendance to inner-city parishes. The church has also weathered changes within the Catholic Church, such as the Second Vatican Council, and changing spiritual values throughout the rest of the United States.

The archdiocese sustained severe damage from Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. Numerous churches and schools were flooded and battered by hurricane-force winds. In the more heavily flooded neighborhoods, such as St. Bernard Parish, many parish structures were wiped out entirely.

Response to same-sex marriage
In early 2009, the state of Maine passed a law allowing same-sex civil marriage. In July 2009, the Archdiocese of New Orleans contributed $2,000 to a referendum campaign to overturn that law. According to Maine's "Commission on Governmental Ethics & Election Practices", the Diocese of Portland Maine spent over $553,000 to overturn the law.

Sex abuse scandal and 2020 bankruptcy filing
In November 2018, after consulting with community and civic leaders, the Archdiocese of New Orleans listed 81 clergy who were "credibly accused" of committing acts of sex abuse over decades while they were serving in the archdiocese. Some settled lawsuits filed against them while one, Francis LeBlanc, had been convicted in 1996.

In December 2019, former deacon Greg Brignac was arrested for multiple acts of abuse, including raping an altar boy at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in the late 1970s. Brignac died before his trial, shortly after falling and breaking his back in jail in June 2020.

In January 2020, the New Orleans Saints football team admitted that Senior Vice President for Communications Greg Bensel had provided public relations advice to the archdiocese. Bensel gave them "...input on how to work with the media" regarding the sex abuse scandal. He advised the archdiocese to "Be direct, open and fully transparent, while making sure that all law enforcement agencies were alerted."

On May 1, 2020, the archdiocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, affecting only the administrative office of the archdiocese, and not schools, Masses, and other ministries, citing the mounting cost of litigation from sexual abuse cases and the unforeseen financial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The archdiocese, which had a $45 million budget, owed $38 million in bonds to creditors and was also facing more pending sex abuse lawsuits. The pending sex abuse lawsuits, which were suspended due to the bankruptcy filing, would probably have cost the already financially struggling archdiocese millions of dollars more. On August 20, 2020, victims of sex abuse by clergy who served in the archdiocese filed a motion in court to dismiss the bankruptcy. The case continued.

In May 2020, the board president of an archdiocesan ministry, who chose to remain anonymous, resigned his post. He claimed that he was forced out of his position because he was suing the archdiocese. In 2013, the man had told Archbishop Aymond that he had been molested in 1980 at St. Ann School in Metairie by archdiocesan priest James Collery. Collery died in 1987. In 2013, Aymond agreed to pay for the victim's counseling as needed. In 2019, this agreement was amended to cover six more years of counseling. However, the victim sued the archdiocese in April 2020, saying that he took this action after discovering that Collery had had other victims.

Also in May 2020, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill suspended all archdiocesan retirement benefits for priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors. One of the priests, Paul Calamari, petitioned the court to reinstate his benefits. Speaking in a court session, Calamari told Grabill that he had a "failing" and a "sin" with a 17-year-old high school boy in 1973. In November, 2020, a news report revealed that the archdiocese had paid one of Calamari's alleged victims US$100,000 two years before, deeming the sex abuse allegations against Calamari to be credible.

On August 19, 2020, Brian Highfill was added to the archdiocesan list of credibly accused clergy, nearly two decades after he was first accused of sex abuse. A trove of love letters which Highfill wrote to one of his victims, Scot Brander, in the 1980s also backed allegations that he committed acts of sex abuse. Brander, who Highfill had known since he was ten, later committed suicide; his brother Michael Brander kept the letters and still pursued justice. The archdiocese refused until 2018 to deem sex abuse allegations against Highfill as credible, but then suspended him indefinitely from ministry; his was the 64th name added to the 2018 list of credibly accused clergy. Highfill, who was also accused of committing sexual abuse against two airmen while serving as an Air Force chaplain in the Archdiocese for the Military Services, died of cancer in January 2022 while still undergoing a criminal investigation by the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

On October 23, 2020, archdiocesan priest Pat Wattigny was arrested in Georgia on a warrant issued by the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's office, charged with four counts of molestation of a juvenile, sexual abuse of a teenage boy, while he was leading a church in Slidell. Wattigny allegedly confessed to the Archdiocese of New Orleans that he had started sexually abusing his victim in 2013.

In June 2023 it was revealed by hitherto secret church files—the district attorney refused to say whether a subpoena had been issued for the documents—that the last four archbishops of New Orleans had gone to "shocking lengths" to hide child abuse by a confessed molester who was still alive at the time. Priest Lawrence Hecker confessed to his superiors in 1999 that he had between about 1966 and 1979 sexually molested several teenagers that he had met due to his work as a priest. Hecker's confession said that Archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him in 1988 about an accusation of sexual abuse. In 1996 Hannan's successor Francis Schulte deemed another allegation as unsubstantiated. Hecker was allowed to continue working until he retired in 2002.

In the aftermath of the 2002 sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, attorneys for the archdiocese, pressured by the scandal, reported Hecker, and a few other priests, to the New Orleans police, but only mentioned one case, and not that he had confessed. Hecker was never charged with a crime, although further accusations were made over time. The Catholic church adopted transparency policies after the Boston scandal, but the New Orleans archdiocese only acknowledged that Hecker was a predator on releasing the 2018 list of accused clergy. In early 2020, despite his having confessed to child abuse, the Vatican bestowed the honorific title of monsignor on Hecker.

The diocese continued paying Hecker and other abusers retirement benefits, until a judge overseeing the diocese's bankruptcy ordered payments to stop. It was not clear in June 2023, when the documents became public, whether Hecker, aged 91, would be charged. In August 2023, Hecker acknowledged his 1999 confession in an interview conducted jointly by WWL-TV and the British newspaper The Guardian. Hecker had confessed to committing "overtly sexual acts" with at least three underage boys in the late 1960s and 1970s and revealed his close relationships with four others until the 1980s. In September 2023, a grand jury indicted Hecker on charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, aggravated crimes against nature, and theft. This led to Hecker turning himself in. He was booked, but entered a plea of not guilty. His bail bond was set at $800,000, though it was reported in January 2024 that he could not pay the bond, and remained in jail. It was also revealed that while being investigation for a separate child sexual abuse case in December 2020, Hecker confessed in a legal deposition that he still looked at child pornography. In April 2024, a new search warrant was issued that allowed police to seize more documents related to the investigation against Hecker, though Hecker himself was determined, shortly before this warrant was issued, to be mentally unfit to stand trial due to short-term memory loss, but a report found that Hecker's mental health indicated he could eventually recover from this condition, and become once again mentally fit to stand trial.

In October 2023 the archdiocese of New Orleans finally acknowledged that V.M. Wheeler, an attorney and church benefactor who had died that year after having been ordained a deacon despite the church receiving a report of earlier child abuse, had been a credibly accused child molester, after his victim received a substantial financial settlement and more than ten months after he pleaded guilty to child molestation. The victim said about the delay "They can't even do something as simple as put somebody on the list who admitted it". In December 2022, Wheeler was sentenced to five years probation, but died from pancreatic cancer in April 2023.

In December 2023, it was revealed that the Archdiocese's bankruptcy case would drag into 2024. No solid plan for either compensating victims or determining when to end the bankruptcy had been presented by the end of 2023, and the case continued in 2024.

Bishops of Louisiana and the Two Floridas

 * 1) Luis Ignatius Peñalver y Cárdenas (1795–1801), appointed Archbishop of Guatemala
 * 2) Francisco Porró y Reinado (disputed, 1801–1803), then appointed Bishop of Tarazona in Spain
 * 3) Louis-Guillaume DuBourg (1815–1825), appointed Bishop of Montauban and later Archbishop of Besançon in France

– Joseph Rosati (coadjutor bishop 1823–1825, apostolic administrator 1826–1829); resigned as coadjutor bishop 1826, appointed first Bishop of St. Louis 1827

Bishops of New Orleans

 * 1) Leo-Raymond de Neckere (1830–1833)

– Auguste Jeanjean (appointed in 1834; resigned before assuming office)
 * 1) Antoine Blanc (1835–1850), elevated to Archbishop

Archbishops of New Orleans



 * 1) Antoine Blanc (1850–1860)
 * 2) Jean-Marie Odin (1861–1870)
 * 3) Napoléon-Joseph Perché (1870–1883)
 * 4) Francis Xavier Leray (1883–1887)
 * 5) Francis Janssens (1888–1897)
 * 6) Placide-Louis Chapelle (1897–1905)
 * 7) James Blenk, S.M. (1906–1917)
 * 8) John W. Shaw (1918–1934)
 * 9) Joseph F. Rummel (1935–1964)
 * 10) John P. Cody (1964–1965), appointed Archbishop of Chicago (elevated to Cardinal in 1967)
 * 11) Philip M. Hannan (1965–1989)
 * 12) Francis B. Schulte (1989–2002)
 * 13) Alfred C. Hughes (2002–2009)
 * 14) Gregory M. Aymond (since 2009)

Former auxiliary bishops

 * Gustave Augustin Rouxel (1899–1908)
 * John Laval (1911–1937)
 * Louis Abel Caillouet (1947–1976)
 * Harold R. Perry, SVD (1966–1991)
 * Stanley Joseph Ott (1976–1983), appointed Bishop of Baton Rouge
 * Robert William Muench (1990–1996), appointed Bishop of Covington and later Bishop of Baton Rouge
 * Dominic Carmon, SVD (1993–2006)
 * Gregory Michael Aymond (1997–2000), appointed Coadjutor Bishop and later Bishop of Austin and Archbishop of New Orleans
 * Roger Paul Morin (2003–2009), appointed Bishop of Biloxi
 * Shelton Joseph Fabre (2007–2013), appointed Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux and later Archbishop of Louisville
 * Fernand J. Cheri, OFM (2015–2023), died in office

Other priests of this diocese who became bishops

 * Thomas Heslin, appointed Bishop of Natchez in 1889
 * Cornelius Van de Ven, appointed Bishop of Natchitoches in 1904
 * Jules Jeanmard, appointed Bishop of Lafayette in Louisiana in 1918
 * Robert Emmet Tracy, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Lafayette in Louisiana in 1959 and later Bishop of Baton Rouge
 * Joseph Gregory Vath, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Mobile-Birmingham in 1966
 * Gerard Louis Frey, appointed Bishop of Savannah in 1967 and later Bishop of Lafayette in Louisiana
 * William Donald Borders, appointed Bishop of Orlando in 1968 and later Archbishop of Baltimore
 * John Clement Favalora, appointed Bishop of Alexandria in 1986 and later Bishop of Saint Petersburg and Archbishop of Miami
 * Thomas John Rodi, appointed Bishop of Biloxi in 2001 and later Archbishop of Mobile
 * Joseph Nunzio Latino appointed Bishop of Jackson in 2003
 * Dominic Mai Luong, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Orange in 2003
 * John-Nhan Tran, appointed Auxiliary bishop of Atlanta in 2022

Landmarks
St. Louis Cathedral is located on Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was originally built in 1718, shortly after the founding of the city. The church building was destroyed by fire several times before the current structure was built between 1789 and 1794 during Spanish rule. During renovations to the cathedral between 1849 and 1851, St. Patrick's Church, the second-oldest parish in the city, served as the pro-cathedral of the archdiocese.

Parishes
The 108 parishes of the archdiocese are divided into 10 deaneries.

Schools
The Archdiocese of New Orleans has five colleges and over 20 high schools. Many of the parishes operate primary schools.

Previously Catholic schools were racially segregated. In 1962 there were 153 Catholic schools; that year the archdiocese began admitting black students into schools that did not admit them; that year about 200 black children attended the archdiocese's Catholic schools previously not reserved for black children. The desegregation occurred two years after public schools had integrated. Bruce Nolan of The Times Picayune stated that because Catholic schools had a later desegregation, white liberal and African-American groups faced disappointment but that the integration had not produced as intense of a backlash.

Seminaries

 * Notre Dame Seminary – New Orleans
 * Saint Joseph Seminary College – Saint Benedict

Ecclesiastical province of New Orleans

 * See: List of the Catholic bishops of the United States