When the Diocese of Lafayette was separated from the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 1918, there were only four Catholic institutions besides the church parishes in southwest Louisiana: the Academy of the Sacred Heart (established in 1821) and St. Charles College (1837) in Grand Coteau, St. Patrick’s Sanitarium in Lake Charles (1908), and Holy Rosary Institute in Lafayette (1913).
But very shortly after he became bishop, Jules B. Jeanmard began pushing for another one, an orphanage, and he unabashedly used the spirit of Christmas in his annual pleas, at first for help in building it, then for its continued support.
“Charity impels me to appeal to you at the approach of Christmas in behalf of a work of mercy to which no human heart can remain cold and indifferent,” he wrote in a message to the people of the diocese in 1921. “It is the cause of the orphans. As we lay our plans for the upbuilding of our new diocese … it is well that we should seek to rest its foundation on the bed-rock of charity. And if we look around to see where relief is needed, our eyes will fall on the little ones of God’s flock who have lost father or mother, or both, and in their weakness and helplessness, hold out their little hands and beg us to give them shelter, food and raiment, and something of mother-love for which their little hearts yearn.”
Orphans from the Lafayette diocese were sent to New Orleans, he wrote, “but the orphanages of that great charitable city are so crowded that it is sometimes … impossible … to have them received. The funds at the disposal of these institutions are, besides, so limited that the Sisters in charge are often obliged to go out on the streets and beg for the necessaries of life for their little wards.”
Because of that, he decided that “a collection would be taken up annually on Christmas Day in all of the churches of the diocese for the maintenance of an orphans’ home.”
“I appeal to you, then, dearly beloved brethren, not to forget the orphans on Christmas Day.” he wrote. “Christmas is the happiest and most joyful day of the year. … Fond parents … gather their children around them and lavish upon them tokens of love and affection. It is [a] children’s day, and the house rings with their merriment.
“The poor little orphans … know little of the joy and happiness of that day. With no decent home to shelter them, scarcely enough to eat to keep body and soul together, no mother-love and fond caresses to cheer and warm their starving little hearts, what can Christmas mean to them but a day of loneliness and sadness in the midst of joy and merriment?
“Your generous contributions … will enable me to bring at least some rays of sunshine into the sad and desolate lives of these poor little ones of God’s flock.”
The people responded to his plea. Four thousand turned out three years later, on Oct. 19, 1924, when St. Mary’s Home was opened just a few blocks from the bishop’s house in Lafayette. Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, the same order that staffed St. Patrick’s, took care of the children and “home schooled” them through the sixth grade.
The bishop walked to the orphanage practically every day to talk with the Sisters and visit the children. On Sunday afternoons, he and his driver, McGaffery (Bebe) Sam, would cram as many of the kids as they could into the bishop’s big Lincoln Continental and take them for a ride, sometimes stopping at another of the bishop’s favorite new institutions, Immaculata Seminary, for a pickup baseball game.
Each year the bishop’s Christmas appeal fell on more and more receptive ears, reaching well beyond the pews of the Catholic churches. One of the biggest benefactors was Maurice Heymann, the Jewish proprietor of Lafayette’s biggest department store.
An entry in a journal kept at St. Mary’s Home in December 1928 records, “Their good friend, Mr. Heymann, was bountiful in his gifts of toys, fruit, and candy, etc. On Thanksgiving day also the good benefactor to the children had them taken to his store where each of the thirty-five children were fitted with clothing, shoes, hats, etc.”
Hundreds of children benefitted from his charity and that of many others for more than a half century. Bishop Jeanmard retired in 1956 but the Sisters at St. Mary’s Home continued to care for “the little ones of God’s flock” until it was finally closed as an orphanage in 1976. It served for several more years as a day school for children with learning disabilities and as offices for Catholic charities, but its three buildings eventually became part of the campus of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
One of the three remains. The main building was demolished in 1986, but its cupola was saved and now shelters the bandstand in a small park on Jefferson Street in Lafayette,
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
