History of Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church

The story behind Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church is full of Lacombe’s and Louisiana’s rich history.  Even today, an aura of timelessness beckons as the ancient oak trees whisper, “Sit, rest, and listen; do not disturb this sacred place,” with gray moss gently swaying from the massive oak limbs that sweep so low they kiss the ground.  Here in this hushed niche of the world, the past seems alive and real in parallel with the present.  By imagining the few passing cars are horses pulling their carriages, one can almost discern the voices of Père Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette and Father Francis Balay.  The history of Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Lacombe is inextricably linked with these two men. 

 Père Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette
 
Long before he was called to the priesthood, Père Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette knew Lacombe well.  Père Rouquette was born in New Orleans on February 26, 1813.  As prominent Creoles, the Rouquette family had a residence in the French Quarter (413 Royal Street) and on Bayou St. John.  Père Rouquette spent a part of his boyhood at each of these homes; however, it was the Choctaw Indians who lived along Bayou St. John and in St. Tammany who captured his young heart and soul.  After he studied law in France (1828 – 1833) and was ordained a priest in 1845, his childhood memories lured him back to Lacombe and the companions of his boyhood.
 
Père Adrien Rouquette sacrificed a great deal to live among the Lacombe Choctaws and minister to them.  Having the significant distinction of being the first Creole ordained a priest after Louisiana had become a part of the United States, Père Rouquette had a variety of opportunities.  According to Father Hugh Bauman of St. Joseph’s Abbey, Père Rouquette had the formal training and the intellectual ability to have ascended the church’s hierarchy.  However in 1859, he requested release from St. Louis Cathedral and his job as secretary to Archbishop Blanc and began ministering to the Bayou Lacombe Choctaws.  It was Père Rouquette who first acquainted the Choctaws with the Catholic religion.  During his twenty-seven years as a missionary to the Choctaw Indians, Père Rouquette built several small chapels “under the oaks and around the bayous” of St. Tammany Parish.
 
The first small cabin-chapel in the Lacombe area was known as “Le Coin or “The Nook.”  Today, Belle Park Road can be used to reach the area where the Nook was located.  In 1913 a marble cross was placed on the site of the Nook by the Knights of Columbus to remember the centennial of Père Rouquette’s birth. 
 
Père Rouquette joined the Indians of Buchuwa Village, north of Lacombe.  The first mass was held at an old abandoned lodge on June 24, 1859.  Rather than trying to replace the Choctaws’ special festivals with a Christian observance, Père Rouquette accepted the indian rituals and incorporated them into his religious teachings.  Today, we still have the beautiful Buchuwa ceremony of honoring the dead because Père Rouquette allowed the practice to continue.  Each All Saints’ Day, “Toussaint,” Lacombe Catholics continue to celebrate by cleaning the cemeteries, white-washing the tombs, and placing candles on the graves and headstones.  At dark, the candles are lit.  This scene, called Buchuwa, is reminiscent of the ceremony Père Rouquette observed in the Indian village more than a century ago.
 
During the Civil War, in 1862, a group of jayhawkers and deserters destroyed the Buchuwa Village and killed many of the Choctaws.  After the destruction of the village and the death of his friends, Père Rouquette moved the wounded Choctaws to the area of the Nook.  From 1876 until illness forced him to return to New Orleans in 1886, he spent most of his time with the few remaining Choctaws at Kildara ln Bayou Chinchuba.  Many Choctaws  walked in their beloved priest’s funeral in New Orleans.
 
Père Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette is remembered as the “apostle to the Choctaws”.  The tribe he lived and labored with bestowed upon him a unique honor.  Among Indian missionaries, he was the only one to be given the tribe’s name.  The Choctaws called him “Chahta-Ima” which translates into “like a Choctaw”.  “I taught, baptized, and married these true natives, these legitimate owners of the soil, I gave myself wholly to them.  I became one of them Chahta-Ima did his best with what he had never forgetting his main goal:  to teach about God.
 
 
Many of Chahta-Ima’s manuscripts and other papers were collected from the Chinchuba Creekcabin-chapel by Father Eugene Aveilhe, the pastor at Mandeville where Père Rouquette died.  Father Aveilhe immediately began the process of purchasing land in the Lacombe area for a permanent church.  Land was purchased from one of Père Rouquette’s nieces, Delphine Cousin.  The construction began in 1890.  Until the church was completed, Father Aveilhe and Father Lavaquery, a French missionary, served the Lacombe area from Mandeville.
 
Father Francis Balay, O.S.B.
 
The new church was to be called St. Cecilia.  St. Cecilia, with its exterior scaffoldings still in place, did not appear “finished” when on September 15, 1915, a young, energetic Benedictine monk, Father Francis Balay, became the pastor of the first official Catholic church building in Lacombe.  According to Father Hugh Bauman, Father Balay brought special abilities to his ministry at Lacombe.  He was from France and could communicate well with the large French speaking population.  In addition, he expressed a deep love for the people and the piney woods of Lacombe.  Like Père Rouquette, had Father Balay remained in France, he would most likely have advanced to a high church position.  Father Balay learned quickly upon his arrival that the United States government had moved the few remaining Indians to the Oklahoma Territory in 1903.  The Lacombe people,many of Choctaw descent were grateful to once again have their own priest.
 
The construction of St. Cecilia’s was tested and proven inadequate when in 1915 the famous Galveston hurricane hit the Northshore. The windows, statues, furnishings, and even the high altar were destroyed.  However, the life-size statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was spared. 
 
The new church building was to have a new name.  Father Balay and those who found the statue were convinced that the church’s new name would be Sacred Heart of Jesus.  On September 29, 1918, three years exactly since the storm had destroyed St. Cecilia’s, Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church was dedicated by Archbishop John W. Shaw of New Orleans.  At each church where Father Balay served, he erected a unique cross.  The Maltese Cross became Father Balay’s emblem.  Even today, this cross can be seen in the front courtyard area where the brick church stood before the fire.  At one time, according to Father Bauman, the original cross placed by Father Balay was relocated to the Holy Redeemer grounds in Lacombe for safe keeping. 
 
Father Francis Balay used a bicycle between train rides to cover his parish.  He then progressed to a motorcycle and then finally a Model T Ford. 
 
Father Balay influenced Father Bauman’s decision to become a priest.  Most people who speak of Father Francis Balay do so with love and reverence.  His contributions to the Lacombe area were manifold.
 
Several chapels were built by Father Balay, but the one he held closest to his heart was the Lourdes Shrine in Forest Glen, near the Ravinne Creuse north of Lacombe.  The chapel, started about 1920, was established to reach the remnants of Choctaws who lived above Lacombe.  Father Balay chose this site in Lacombe because it reminded him of his homeland, Lourdes, France.  The Lourdes Shrine in Lacombe was fashioned to resemble the shrine in France as much as possible.  There is still, today, a fresh spring which bubbles into the Ravinnne Creuse near Bayou Lacombe.  Father Balay diverted some of this spring water into a small grotto that he had formed inside the church.  A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was placed inside the grotto and above the fountain of flowing spring water.  Over the years many have reported the water to have healing powers. 
 
In 1940 when Father Francis Balay was extremely ill and in an ambulance on his way to Hotel Dieu Hospital in New Orleans, he asked the driver to pass by the Lourdes shrine.  Father Bauman related that the priest riding with Father Francis saw him lift himself up and gaze at the shrine.  Father Balay then closed his eyes and died.  His Lourdes Shrine continues to give hope and comfort to many.
 
In the 1950s, large groups from New Orleans made yearly pilgrimages to the Lourdes Shrine in Lacombe.  This practice continued for years; however the shrine suffered a slow decline and was severely vandalized during the 1970s.  During the 1980s a group of concerned Lacombe parishioners undertook a successful campaign to raise money to restore the Lourdes Shrine.  This endeavor was triumphant due to the unceasing prayers and labor of two Lacombe sisters, Alice Buckley and Mary Couret (Perkins).  Today Holy Mass is once again held at the shrine.  The tranquility and timelessness perceived by sojourners at Father Balay’s Louisiana Lourdes Shrine are even more penetrating than that experienced at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church.
 
Perhaps, the penetrating perception of holiness and timelessness which surrounds Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church is love --  manifested by consummate devotion to duty and full abandon of self.  Certainly, the lives of two men, Pere Adrien-Emmanual Rouquette and Father Francis Balay, were consecrated to the bodies and souls of the Lacombe people.  That love and devotion was returned and has been remembered.  When a visitor sits on a bench outside of Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, the massive oaks’ protective limbs seem to stand still and --- for just a moment – a ripple of past care and concern, so freely given, washes over the visitor’s senses.  Renewed and refreshed, the world poses a less formidable challenge, and devotion to duty appears a much more worthwhile endeavor. 
 
Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church --- wrapped in the past --- whispering a timeless message today, to all who will pause and listen:  “Give of yourself, give what you know, what you love, what you can be!” Saint Francis of Assisi beautifully expresses this ideal in a line from his famous prayer, “For it is in giving, that we receive.”  The fervent love given to this quiet burg and its church waits to be given away to anyone who will ask.
 
A research paper published in an SLU journal called "The Pick" by historian, Drena Hutchinson whose family was part of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church Community.
 
Color photos: Inside Northshore July-August 2009