Hear From Leaders in Faith

“As the official representative of The Holy See in the United States, I commend to you the story of these five priests … This episode in the history of the American Church is a needed message for our Western world in the current age. It highlights a model of sanctity that is attainable for all of the faithful. Most importantly, it points to the salvation of souls as the ultimate horizon for us all … As missionary priests from Brittany who answered a call to leave their homeland and travel to the frontier of Louisiana, they labored with piety and unselfish dedication, inspired by charity, before offering their own lives for the sake of their fellow man during the devastating Yellow Fever Epidemic, which occurred from August to November 1873 in Shreveport… These holy priests live on in the memory of the people not only because of their apostolic work in helping to build the Church in that part of Louisiana, but above all because of their heroic sacrifices.”

Christophe Cardinal Pierre
Apostolic Nuncio to the United States (October 22, 2020)

“… Herewith I recognize as worthy of special consideration and honor these five priests who made a free and voluntary offer of their lives, inspired and sustained by charity, persevering with this determination unto death in pure and final fulfillment of Christian virtue on God’s earth, to ease the suffering of humanity. They are thus deserving of admiration and imitation and are to be henceforth known as “Servants of God.”

Bishop Francis I. Malone
Bishop of Shreveport (December 8, 2020)

How do I feel at this point in the Cause for Canonization?   This is how I see it: our Servants of God did not simply serve their people—they laid down their lives in a radiant imitation of Christ, ministering in the epidemic-stricken streets of Shreveport until death overtook them, one after the other. Their sacrifice was not just dramatic; it was deeply Eucharistic—a total gift of self, offered not from a distance, but face-to-face with the dying, the abandoned, and the forgotten.

What stirs my heart most at this moment in the Cause is not that I know the names of my predecessors, these first priests of northern Louisiana—but that they know my name. They have become for me more than historical figures; they are brothers, intercessors, friends. They carry in their hearts the joys and the pain, the hopes and the burdens of those they once served—and now, by grace, mine as well.

Their deaths did not end their ministry; it deepened it. As Bishop Martin, their bishop, said in grief and in faith:    “Happy is the earth watered by their sweat and sanctified by their death. Martyrs to charity, in their venerated tombs, will grow the deepest roots of the Holy Church of the One whose death was our life.”

From their heavenly place, they still labor in love. I ask you to join me in praying through their intercession: that the Church may soon declare them Venerable, and that their holy witness may stir in us the same courage to love—without counting the cost. 

Father Peter B. Mangum
Episcopal Delegate