Telling east-side history

• By CAROL ANNE BLITZER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Feb 21, 2009 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

CONVENT — When the Rev. Frank Uter moved to St. James Parish a dozen years ago, the Catholic churches on the east bank of the Mississippi River got a historian as well as a priest.

“I had this feeling of excitement, almost like being a missionary,” Uter said of his move after 13 years as pastor of St. Joseph Cathedral in Baton Rouge. “It was a feeling that wouldn’t go away, a feeling that God might be speaking to my heart, that God might be calling me here.”

This year, the three Catholic parishes Uter serves are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Catholic church on their side of the river and the priest has authored a new book, “Stones Beside a River: A History of the Catholic Church on the East Bank of St. James Parish 1809-2009.”

Two hundred years ago, the west bank of the parish was thriving, Uter said. “The east bank was just the backlands.”
There was a church on the west bank as early as 1771, but it took more than 35 years for the east bank to have a population large enough to sustain its own church.

That church was St. Michael the Archangel, which was built before the parish was started and completed in 1809, Uter said.

In the early years, St. Michael grew quickly, especially under its sixth pastor, the Rev. Charles de la Croix, a native of Ghent, Belgium. He served St. Michael from 1823-1834.

De la Croix persuaded the Religious of the Sacred Heart to establish an academy for girls near St. Michael.
The new Sacred Heart Academy, which gave the town of Convent its name, opened Nov. 1, 1825.

“I think the convent is the reason this side of the river developed,” Uter said. “The three-story building housed 200 to 300 boarders.”

Even though the local residents were satisfied with their little church, de la Croix purchased from Mimi Zilia, a freed slave, a tract of land about a mile upriver from the church and in 1827 began making plans for a new and bigger St. Michael.

With generous donations from church members, families of students of Sacred Heart Academy and Catholics in Belgium, the present church was built.

The church, designed by an architect in Belgium, is an elegant, refined brick structure, a mixture of Roman and Gothic architecture.

“It is not what you normally see in the 1830s on the river,” Uter said.

Bishop Leo Raymond De Neckére, the third bishop of New Orleans, blessed the new church in elaborate ceremonies on March 9, 1833. Against the advice of members of St. Michael, the bishop returned to New Orleans in the middle of a yellow fever epidemic, fell victim to the disease while ministering to the needs of the community and died within 10 days.