In its more than 300 years of existence as a topographically challenged city pummelled by a holy trinity of natural disasters – fire, flood and pestilence – one sacred building less than 200 metres from the Mississippi River has framed the religious, cultural and political life of this oddest and most exotically Catholic of American cities: New Orleans.
A Catholic church has existed at the head of Jackson Square since 1727 – nine years after New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville.
The Cathedral Basilica of St Louis, King of France, locally recognised as the oldest continuously operating cathedral in the United States, is actually the third church to stand on a site laid out in 1721 according to a city plan prepared by Pierre Le Blond de la Tour, a French royal engineer.
With the Catholic faith the only one legally allowed in the new colony under the Code Noir, de la Tour’s street plan called for a walled city that included a public square with a Catholic church facing a sweeping curve of the mighty Mississippi.
Although the French clergy, represented by the Capuchins, repeatedly requested a church, construction was not begun until 1724 and took three years to complete, with the first Mass celebrated on Christmas Eve 1727. The church survived the transfer of the Louisiana territory from France to Spain in 1762. But a Good Friday fire on March 21, 1788, reduced St Louis Church and 80 per cent of the city to rubble.
One of the quaint tales of the 1788 fire, probably apocryphal, posited that the fire grew out of control in part because Père Antoine Sedella, the St Louis Church rector, mindful of the church’s prohibition on the ringing of bells during the Triduum, refused to allow the church bells to peal as an early warning sign for the fire brigade. “We will always be unclear as to whether or not he rang the bells,” said Lee Leumas, a former archivist of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. “Some of the historians say that absolutely could not have happened because the fire swept through the cathedral so quickly he didn’t have a chance to ring them.”
A new church of Renaissance design, with flanking octagonal bell towers, was paid for by Spaniard Don Andrés Almonestery Roxas and dedicated over the original foot priint in 1794. While that church was under construction – in 1793 – Louisiana and Florida were separated from the Diocese of Havana, Cuba, allowing the church to be designated for the first time as St Louis Cathedral.
By the mid-1800s, the cathedral’s side walls had cracked and fallen into such disrepair that new side walls with larger footings were required. While that construction was underway, the uncompleted central bell tower collapsed, taking down part of the roof and the newly built walls.
Except for some cosmetic details, the cathedral that was dedicated on December 7, 1851, has remained largely unchanged for the last 173 years, withstanding a fire that heavily damaged the adjacent Cabildo in 1988 and surviving three direct hurricane hits – an unnamed storm in 1915, Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
But, now, the cathedral is once again exhibiting the ill effects of moisture, humidity and advanced age. And, here is where the story takes an only-in-New-Orleans twist.
Gayle Marie LaJaunie Benson, an interior designer and mostly disinterested American football fan, was a dedicated lector at the cathedral when after Mass on April 19, 2004, New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson walked into the sacristy to thank Mgr Crosby Kern, the cathedral rector, for taking care of the liturgical details for his wife Grace’s funeral Mass a few months earlier.
“And who’s this young lady?” Benson asked. Six months later, they were married, and when Tom Benson died in 2018, Gayle Benson became the owner not only of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints but also of the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans. The franchises have an estimated combined net worth of nearly $9 billion. She has stated publicly that upon her death – she has no children – all of her assets will be liquidated and distributed to causes she has championed.
To this day, Benson reads regularly at the cathedral’s Sunday 9am and 11am Masses, and has underwritten the production costs to have both Masses air live on both network and public television. She also arranges for Masses to be celebrated before every Saints’ home game for team officials inside the Caesars Superdome.
There is one thing Benson insists cannot be delayed. Restoring St Louis Cathedral to pristine condition and securing its long-term maintenance through a fully-funded endowment has become as much of a passion for her as winning a Super Bowl or an NBA championship.
The restoration cost is likely to approach $75-100 million; a public campaign is soon to be launched. Benson is using her inherited high profile to rally local and national groups to participate in funding the initiative. Setting up an endowment for future maintenance would make St Louis Cathedral one of the first in the US to have such a restoration safety net, said Cory Howat, executive director of the archdiocesan Catholic Community Foundation.
“This is so important to our community,” Benson said during a tour of the cathedral, whose interior ceiling has been compromised silently over time by water intrusion. “We cannot afford to lose this monument. It’s an iconic part of the entire French Quarter. This restoration will go beyond making cosmetic repairs. It’s bigger than that, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Last year, Benson and a small group of New Orleans architects travelled to Paris to view restoration work at Notre Dame Cathedral, which is being rebuilt timber by timber following the devastating 2019 fire.
“We learned from their architects and their designers what can be done and how beautiful it can be,” Benson said. “They showed us some of the areas that were burned and how they started cleaning it, and it was just beautiful. I’m sure we’re going to have part of that, too, when we start removing some of the paint that’s been here forever. But, before we start doing paint, we need the foundation and windows and other things done.”
Kevin Morris, president of Holly and Smith Architects in New Orleans, and associate Andre Villere travelled with Benson to Paris to assess the work being done at Notre Dame. In 2015 – four years before the fire at Notre Dame – Vassar College art professor Andrew Tallon and a team of students used high-tech laser technology (Lidar) to map every inch of the Paris cathedral. That 3D mapping became critically important in the post-fire restoration.
New Orleans architects also have a Lidar map of St Louis Cathedral, and Dr Ryan Gray, a professor of archaeology from the University of New Orleans, and several students dug four holes near the front and inside the cathedral to determine the condition of the foundation.
Morris said based on 20 years of elevation data, the current consensus is that the cathedral’s foundation is in relatively good shape.
“It’s amazing to see that a 150-year-old structure is still intact and still is relatively stable,” Morris said. “Nothing is deteriorating substantially, save the ceiling. The plaster ceiling is deteriorating pretty badly. This is our trending thought right now. I don’t see any evidence that the cathedral is continuing to sink.”
The cathedral’s slate roof is in good shape, Morris said, but an older version of underlay material has allowed water to seep into the church, creating serious cracking of the plaster ceilings.
“We want to address the envelope of the building – the things that keep out water but also allow the building to continue to breathe,” Morris said. “Some of these systems previously have had the ability to trap moisture, and that leads to bubbling plaster and things of that nature. We would love to get those coatings off and reapply more modernised coatings. Our challenge was to see what we could put in place to preserve it for another 50 years.”
Once the exterior of the cathedral is climate-controlled, the interior work can begin on the plaster and on restoring the decorative ceiling paintings, many of which were done on canvas. “We can peel those off and save then and put them back on,” Villere said.
Stained-glass windows which have allowed moisture to seep in will be removed and re-leaded off-site. Although there are no signs of active termite damage – a ubiquitous New Orleans pestilence – both architects have been amazed by the structural steel beams that were added to the main attic over the nave of the church, which reinforced deteriorating wooden beams.
Morris said a noticeable drop in elevation along the main aisle at the front of the cathedral may have been intentional – a kind of old version of making the building friendlier for those with disabilities – or the result of the bell tower collapse in 1849. The renovations also will include new electrical and fire-suppression systems. No decisions have been made yet on whether or not to replace the cathedral floor with new marble.
There is no firm timetable, but the project will span several years. The cathedral could remain open during exterior work, but it probably would be closed at some point to allow a quicker timetable for completing the interior work, he said.
Morris, a lifelong Catholic who participates in his parish’s music ministry, says his pastor at St Ann Church and Shrine in Metairie, Louisiana, often encourages him to put his God-given architectural talents at the service of the Church. This is more than a job to him. “The talents God provides us is God’s gift to us; what we do with those talents is our gift to God,” Morris said. “I long for the day when we’re able to unveil the cathedral and have it re-experienced by everyone. I feel blessed and privileged to work on this project.”
“It’s our responsibility to make this right,” Benson added. “To accomplish this we are going to reach out to everyone interested in this wonderful project, with many ways in which to help.”
Photo: The restored knave of Cathedral Basilica of St Louis.
This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click here.
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