River Road Rambler: A Curious Traveler along Louisiana's Historic Byway

1. Sacred Recycling

3 1 Sacred Recycling A friend made a point of taking me to St. Michael’s Church in Convent . Behind the resplendent architecture, handsome paintings, and French hand-carved main altar of the main sanctuary was a small, quiet space that featured a grotto. “What do you see?” she asked with an impish grin. I looked around intently: five wooden benches facing the altar in the soft light of flickering votive candles; a running commentary of “thank yous” and “mercis,” on small marble slabs lining the walls; four lovely tall and narrow stained-glass windows; and a high rock wall rising almost to the ceiling and filling the far end of the room. A statue of the Virgin Mary is tucked in an elevated niche within the wall, and another kneeling female statue is recessed in an alcove to the left of an odd-looking altar. It was an Our Lady of Lourdes grotto, but I had no idea how unusual it was. I’d had a vague notion of the story of Our Lady of Lourdes, much beloved by Catholics, which began with Bernadette Soubirous, the daughter of a miller in Lourdes, France, coming upon an apparition of the Virgin Mary on February 11, 1858. She had been collecting firewood near a rural cave when she saw “a young beautiful Lady clad in white with a blue sash, her feet bare but with a golden rose upon each foot.” The Blessed Virgin Mary addressed Bernadette, saying, “I am 4 River Road Rambler the Immaculate Conception.” Thereafter, despite her parents’ prohibitions , Bernadette returned often to the cave to visit the apparition and, at the Virgin’s request, dug in the ground and drank from the spring she found there. The spring created a pool of water, which, when given to ailing people, miraculously cured them. The apparition became known as Our Lady of Lourdes, and the place became a destination for pilgrims who presented prayers for help and were healed through taking the waters. Bernadette joined the Sisters of Charity, remaining a nun until her death in 1879. She was canonized in 1933. Various replicas of the original Lourdes grotto exist around the world; most are cave-like openings or rock niches in which statues of the Virgin Mary have been placed. But the grotto at St. Michael’s, originally constructed in 1876, is a bit different from the others, and not simply because it was one of the first created in the United States or because it may be the first grotto located inside a chapel. Where else, my friend asked, would they have created a massive rock wall made of bagasse clinkers—the charred remains from burning the fibrous residue of sugarcane? And where else would the unseen support for the arch above the altar have been formed using an inverted sugar kettle—one of those broad, open metal cauldrons that were critical in nineteenth-century sugar processing and now decorate many Louisiana gardens? And when else will you see an altar totally studded with bright, pearlized clam shells from the river that are nailed in place to create the effect of an oddly textured mosaic? The answer, of course, was nowhere else. This was a religious site uniquely and richly River Road. St. Michael the Archangel Church was founded in 1809, a mile or so down the road from its present location, to give east-bank Catholics a place of worship without having to cross the river. The original building, small and modest, was replaced in 1831 with a striking brick edifice at the site of the present church. With its stepped gable façade and handsome bell cupola, it served the congregation well until the 1870s, when, all agreed, the congregation needed a larger, Sacred Recycling 5 finer church. The project was supported, if not led, by the wise and revered Father Henry Bellanger, the parish priest. (Father Bellanger was also credited with the 1864 restoration of Jefferson College— now the Manresa Retreat Center—just down the road.) He had attended the Paris World Fair of 1867, where he had found the ornate wooden altar still in the main sanctuary. It’s therefore possible that while in France, Father Bellanger might have visited, or at least heard much talk about, the miracles of Lourdes and the grotto to which believers had flocked for the past decade. He may have brought...