St. Theresa of Avila finds home for Blessed Mother

By Peter Finney Jr.
      Clarion Herald

St. Theresa of Avila Church – founded as a parish in 1848 and serving for decades as a Catholic stronghold for Spanish-speaking Catholics – officially closed June 30 with a prayer service conducted by Father Lance Campo, pastor.
Father Campo led about 30 parishioners on a 12-block eucharistic procession to St. Alphonsus Parish in the Irish Channel, with benediction at 
St. Mary’s Assumption Church on Constance Street. 
With the closure of St. Theresa of Avila, the territory of the parish that is south of the Pontchartrain Expressway will become part of St. Alphonsus Parish; the territory of St. Theresa of Avila that is north of the expressway will become part of St. Patrick Parish on Camp Street.

Our Lady of Charity
After the church doors were closed, parishioner Felix Garcia, who was born in Cuba, transported in his car a statue of Our Lady of Charity del Cobre, the patroness of Cuba, to St. Mary’s Assumption Church.
Garcia, 76, said he was saddened by the closure of St. Theresa because it was among the first churches in the Archdiocese of New Orleans to celebrate Mass in Spanish and was an early focal point of the Spanish-speaking community.

“I was very sad, because that was my church at the beginning,” said Garcia, who serves one afternoon a week as a prayer partner at the Shrine of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos in St. Mary’s Assumption Church. “But, at the same time, I was happy to be able to rescue the statue of Mary and bring it to a place which is going to be there forever. That church is going to be there for a long time. I don’t think the church is going anywhere.”

Garcia said he never knew his father, and his young mother was “too young to raise me.” He came to New Orleans with a family friend who helped raise him.

He spends every Friday afternoon at the Blessed Seelos Center, praying with shrine visitors. When he heard from Father Pedro Nunez that St. Theresa was slated to close, they both wanted to make sure the statue of Our Lady of Charity found a suitable home.

“I told Father (Chung) Cong (Tran, the St. Alphonsus pastor) that we wanted her to come here if he didn’t mind, and he said, ‘Of course, she’s welcome here.’”
[email protected]