The following is a stereo presentation of W on his TV in New Orleans.

City of Spirits.

Religious celebration in New Orleans is made possible by the WYES producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of Channel 12 local productions Dreams.

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additional funding is provided by Jacob Schein and some funeral homes serving New Orleans and the North Shore New Orleans is a community that is well grounded in our religious traditions.

I don't think you get very far in explaining what goes on in New Orleans without having necessarily to begin to discuss religious observance and religious practice, religious origins and burial traditions The spirit of the Catholic faith that the European spirit in New Orleans holds festivals to varying points is not we are not a puritanical people.

I miss that terribly.

When I wasn't here, that sense of religion, the to the festivities, as much as to sacrifice I'm taking Scott Laborde culture as colorful as the artwork adorning our almost 1000 places of worship in the New Orleans area.

Religious customs.

Some may surprise you devotions to full fledged saints and people who may soon be saints, a real mix of the ethnic groups who play their part in the development of New Orleans.

Truly a city of spirits for religion.

It's part of how a community sees itself and how others see the community to be like the most religious services are in themselves a form of celebration.

In New Orleans, many of the public celebrations on our calendar are Roman Catholic in origin.

It's with 37% of the faithful in New Orleans consider themselves its historic dominance continues to play a part in our memories past and present I still don't on the way to work when I go down to Canal Street, you know, when I pass the church I just make the fill a fast one.

You know if that's it, make the sound across.

I think as we look back at the place of religion, and particularly the church in the lives of early settlers of of this country, we shouldn't lose sight of the of the administrative and governmental functions that the church played, that it kept registers, for example, of of births and deaths and baptisms Louisiana doesn't have counties.

It has parishes.

The church was typically involved in education.

The church was involved in essentially welfare.

The taking care of of people in need orphans, those kinds of those kinds of things that we have now.

We have secular mechanisms in the 20th century where the church did all those things.

And as a result, the the the lines of the parishes were were important geographic units for this kind of administration.

Of the social structure of of the colony.

And the the name continues with for Roman Catholics, customs intertwine with rituals such as the mass Vatican two eliminated the requirement that the mass be celebrated in Latin.

Yet what remains are memories of the pomp and circumstance associated with those masses.

St Patrick's church in downtown New Orleans still has a Latin mass.

Recollections are indelibly etched Dominus for this school or Amos crazy Masonic paternal status.

When I was a little boy and only you did the incense.

And when I saw the priest do the thing, I mean, it was like mystical.

And especially the priest spoke in Lent.

And then we got the AIDS stuff in Latin that was like, oh, that was powerful.

I mean, it shifted my whole gears early on.

I mean, I dug at me and it was like, just look at the guy's robes and look at the chalices in the stained glass.

Wow.

You know, I don't recall that side of it.

I and, you know, I think I was in it for the wrong reasons or something, but I loved it.

I even liked all the songs.

I still love church music, you know, where I don't care what time it is.

But, I mean, it's like I remarried.

I mean, it's I love it.

It's church music.

It's just God, it's the High Priest music.

But I love it without anybody in it.

Another young man spent time in church, but it wasn't always in prayer.

Sometimes penance was required for his actions just getting pinched by my mom.

That was the whole concept of being in church, because every time I went to church, I got pinched or something because I was fidgety.

I was I was always doing something.

I learned how to whistle in church, you know, cat whistle, white, loud real loud, you know?

And I was practicing this for weeks because I couldn't whistle loud, you know, like that.

Well, in church, Sunday, Mass, for the first time, it came out loud and quiet, part of the mass, and it was just going up and down and holy name church.

I got pinched occasionally.

Non Roman Catholics would find local customs a bit hard to understand.

I remember my brother coming home from the first grade and my mother having giving him given him a cookie to eat it noon and she asked him if he enjoyed the cookie.

He said no.

He he dropped it on the ground and one of his Roman Catholic buddies told him that, well, if you just picked it up and made the sign of the cross over it, he could eat it.

So my mother asked him, well, what did you do?

He said, Well, I made the sign of the cross over it, but I gave it to my friend because I wasn't a Catholic you don't have to be Catholic to take part Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

It's almost unavoidable.

With Pagan origins, Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday has become a day in the liturgical calendar devoted to the final feasting before 40 days of Lent frivolity tends to overshadow religious details.

The traditional beginning of Carnival is tied to the Catholic calendar.

12th Night, the time where the three kings of Saint will visit Enterprise Child is January six in New Orleans.

That's when the 12th Night revelers hold their ball and the funny 40 pillows ride up and down Saint Charles Avenue proclaiming it's carnival time.

The January date is also the official kickoff for the consumption of cupcakes a brioche type pastry that has its roots in France today.

New Orleans is the place that is taking Carnival to a new level.

By the way, the Latin word Carnival means farewell to the flesh.

That was the great thing about about New Orleans.

Catholicism has kept all those customs that date back really almost to pagan times and to compromises in Europe with pagan beliefs.

I mean, I can't live in plain that I think Mardi grass probably beats the ultimate sin party where, you know, where you get to get it all out of your system right before you go into Lent into the into the Easter season.

But you know, religion and partying kind of go hand in hand in the city, which means which means we party religiously.

There was a big procession with lots of altar boys and acolytes and lots of other priests and the archbishop in special robes.

And he was coming along.

And because of the crowd, this young father put his child up on his shoulders.

And as the archbishop came by, the child started shouting, Throw me something, mister, throw me something.

Well, here, of course, the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday is one of the most busy days that we have.

Everybody comes and gets ashes.

Not only Catholics, but I think two islands believes that if you participated in Mardi Gras, you have a right to get ashes.

So we just give ashes.

And of course, you don't ask people, but as people, you see that only time of the year.

And every now and again somebody will ask you for like, I'm not calling ashes.

Oh, yeah, sure, fine.

Because dust you on dust, you're going to being hap applies to them as well that every Friday would be fresh for sure.

And then my mother would send me to school that day either.

But and a sandwich, a plate and sandwich plantain is like the big big bananas that the and you fry them you know put you want them to add a plant and sandwich or banana.

That's something you know that that was Friday the people who laid down these laws in Rome about abstaining from meat should have come to New Orleans first.

They might have said for penance.

Now eat meat and abstain from your delicious seafood for a while.

Candy, chocolate, soft drinks Kherson, whatever.

You know I don't know those some things I used to give up some pretty wild stuff.

Little you know, some of you maybe can't mention, you know, but but I used to give up things.

Adults, they'd say I'm giving up liquor to children.

They say I'm giving up candy myself.

What I like to do is to give up desserts and not have any wine.

Why do you give up candy?

You know, you give her birth soft drinks for that, you know, for that year.

But I try to give up.

All right.

Well, I gave up drinking for two days, but the no, I can't hear my jack there.

No, I just a little wine.

I'm happy with my wine.

God's grapes.

It's Karl with a large part of the population having Irish roots, the celebration of Saint Patrick's Day has become a popular one.

The stoic Irish Channel neighborhood is the site of the city's largest St Patrick's Day parade.

The parade begins near to historic church structures.

Saint Mary's assumption built for German immigrants, Saint Alphonsus for the Irish.

Since Saint Alphonsus is no longer used as a church, Saint Mary's is the site of the annual mass that precedes the parade.

That's the heritage we walk through today.

That's the heritage that we practice today.

Well, I always think of the great juxtaposition and where we are with all the German priests.

You can't see him, but we say mass on the graves of all the German priests.

And I wonder what they're thinking about.

All these mixed means.

They're saying St Patrick's mass with the Germans, why don't they go across the street where they belong?

And there is a huge weekend parade for St Patrick's Day with floats where everybody say takes all the be sacred Mardi Gras floats and they then throw those for the St Patrick's Day floats this way started in 1947 with my grandfather Richard Bart Senior and it was just a neighborhood parade.

They wanted to start local April parade.

They marched in the parade down Canal Street and they said we can have one of our own because we from the Irish town so 1947 my grandfather Father Baldwin and some of the priests from San Alphonsus got together and we formed the parade.

Then they also threw out potatoes, cabbages and carrots so you can catch the contents of that entire Irish to just two days later another saint gets his due, this time from the Italian-American community in New Orleans.

Saint Patrick is not considered the same as Saint Joseph is in the church.

In fact, a few years ago when the Vatican went through the list of Saints, they said, you know, there's certain things we don't know about but Saint Patrick didn't even make the cut.

He was on the list of the Saints that William is really a saint.

So I don't think the Saint Patrick's Day celebration has the same spiritual roots as St Joseph's does, where people actually do honor and words of Saint Joseph and in his favor of Saint Joseph with the largest influx of Italian immigrants taking place in New Orleans in the 1890s, those immigrants primarily from Sicily, brought with them their custom of honoring Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary, his feast day March.

19th marks the building of altars filled with Lenten foodstuffs created to give thanks for favors.

Granted, the dishes will eventually be shared by family, friends, visitors and those in need.

You can even check the classified ads in the Times-Picayune for altar listings.

The distinction is usually the householders and there were very, very popular during the war time, during World War Two, praying for boys to come home from the war shave or in Thanksgiving after they did come home, a lot of people praying for sickness.

Again, they're done alternately for sickness, for Thanksgiving or in petitions.

A sign that someone has an altar on public view is a palm frond or a bit of greenery.

On their front door.

The residents of this uptown New Orleans home had their own special reason to build an altar.

Well, it was a miracle, really.

We were married five years.

We had no children.

And I had gone to the Jewish church until farther away when going to confession.

The father asked me if I had the church I've known, he says, to go to Saint Joseph in my name.

And now with a few months, you will become.

I did in three months.

I became pregnant and now I want to adopt.

And now and I was pregnant, he says.

That our child was going to be born on the 20th of February, but I told him, no, that boy was coming in 19 at the march.

He says, Please don't do this to me.

He is a little hair I have left on my head.

He says, It's all going to be gone.

This is well, it's going to be gone.

She ran that voice, came on the 19th of March Fine, £7 boy.

And what is little special about the date of the March 19 St Joseph's Day, of course honoring Saint Joseph is hard work.

It takes us just three weeks now because we've gotten smart after all this time.

Well, you know, it really takes about four weeks.

She makes the dome and now on our column and then I take her to open fire and watch the pots and pans among the more unusual pastries found on altars is the pig, the lady, the Italian word for pine cone.

Legend has it that the pastry symbolizes the pinecones Jesus played with as a child.

They are also known as penance cookies with good reason.

They're so hot.

Those ladies that make that really they have a special grace on them because it's so hard.

You have to work with the hot frying right out the frying pan and roll those balls really fast.

And all their hands are red, red and burnt.

And so those ladies God blesses them.

Also adorning the altars are breads.

Their shapes have special meaning, but we just get the traditional pieces, which are the wreath, more or less the crowns Mary's is, which is round.

And then there's a bishop's crown, which is the four pointed bread that's sitting on a Saints table right over here.

And then we have an artichoke, which is not it, and it's called shortbread.

The breads that they make today I think they make them all kind of ways.

You can get the ladder, you get St Joseph's beard and the alligator and Varner fabulous shape and Saint Joseph altars aren't just found in homes.

Organizations build them with volunteers making their own culinary contributions, such as this one put on by the Saint Joseph Guild at the content of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.

An important part of the Saint Joseph tradition is a ceremony called the tuba tuba, which means knocking for prayer.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what do you want?

We seek food and shelter.

That's no right for you and Peter.

Family members of the core committee of the Saint Joseph Guild portray the Saint, Saint Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary in Jesus and we have angels.

And Saint Joseph will go and knock on three doors.

On the first two, he's told there's no room, and on the third he's invited in and they tell him that they'll prepare a meal for him.

And then the children taste food from the altar.

Their memories of the faithful who have participated in the ceremony in the past are vivid, even after more than 60 years.

One year I was Jesus, the baby Jesus, and one of the altars I would I would imagine that 90% of the young Italian men in Cana, back in the thirties and in the twenties in the thirties, was a Jesus at one time or another at the altar a memento of a visit to a Saint Joseph altar is a Father B or a lucky B, as it's better known, according to legend, during a famine in ancient Sicily, the bean that had been used to feed cattle was used instead for food for the people, thereby saving the Sicilians from starvation.

There are many stories that people had.

One man had a lucky bean in his pocket and was shot, and the bullet was ricocheted off of the lucky thing.

And there a very popular commodity from a Saint Joseph.

After I was aware of some cities where they had special celebrations around the time of St Joseph's and Salem in the north end of Boston, or in places where they had a concentration of of Italian people.

But I had actually never seen the Saint Joseph altar and I had never gotten my own personal meeting and I think I first spotted them at Bingo when I was newly ordained, you know, walking around and people have that little good luck charms or medals of them.

And I ask somebody, Well, what is this?

And I saw the lucky being and I said, What's the lucky bean?

And I said, You get them from the Saint Joseph Altar, and you get one and you keep it all year long and you'll be lucky.

St Joseph's altars can also be found in black spiritual churches.

One theory for the adoption of the custom is due to the geographical proximity of black and Italian neighborhoods early in the century.

Italian owned neighborhood grocery stores frequently had altars.

Many Mardi Gras Indian tribes take to the streets again around St Joseph's Day.

And while Saint Joseph may have his special place in New Orleans, his cultural calendar year round, there are those who believe there's another way that he can be observance.

I was having trouble selling my house in Baton Rouge and I had asked around because I had heard of that custom, and the custom that was told me was to bury Saint Joseph upside down a statue of Saint Joseph upside down in the front yard.

So naturally I immediately located a statue of Saint Joseph, buried him upside down, and I did get to sell my house very quickly.

Well, I did dig him up because I wanted to sell another house it's Good Friday, two days before Easter.

On this solemn occasion marking the death of Jesus, some New Orleans Roman Catholics take part in the custom of visiting nine churches, a custom with European roots.

You make the nine churches is all tradition.

Since I was a child, we didn't make an upsurge in Italy.

We had three churches to do so.

We had always the teachers.

Over here we have more choice of making nine churches within every year for a good many years.

It was just tradition we got from our grandmothers, you know, and took it from there.

We celebrate with our family.

Not all the time we have been at that age, you know, the day we bring, you know, because we got our blessings and everything, you know, we feel good about ourselves.

Actually, it was kind of fun for us kids to get together in the neighborhood and do this because we were not allowed to play the radio or sing or play too frivolously.

And all the movie houses in town were closed.

The whole city kind of had a solemn air about it because the day was devoted to commemorating the suffering and death of Jesus.

And I was surprised to find out that some people walked nine churches to just as they do in places in Europe and and part of the pilgrimage might include a visit to the Shrine of Saint and Mary's mother on Ursuline Street near North Broad.

She's great for favors because she is Mary's mother, which is Jesus grandmother.

So you have to go through her to get your favors, sort of to bring to Jesus and Jesus brings them to the Lord.

The shrine is actually a composite of some internationally famous shrines, including that of Lourdes.

In France, there is a replica of the grotto at Lourdes.

In the center is a statue of the Immaculate Conception, also at the Saint and Shrine is a smaller version of the Scala sanctum or Holy Stairway in Rome.

The faithful climb stairs on their knees.

At the top of the steps is a life sized depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus.

If my mother had made those that trek up the steps praying to be the policewoman that she was the first one, and she had prayed to pass that test.

And so that's what her intention was.

So she made that on her knees as as many, many people used to do.

I was having very bad problems with my knees and I was going to authorities, doctor, and they wanted to take my kneecaps out and I didn't want to do not to say, well, you will never walk in next six months sometime.

It's hard for me to kneel.

I go to church and I can have some time at home.

But I made the steps up there ye You'd be surprised that people don't come here.

A lot of people, it's not Catholic, but they have the faith.

At noon after visiting nine churches and the final stop is Saint Roch Cemetery for the way of the cross prayer service.

And Father Thavis modeled his cemetery on Campo Santo Day, the Ted Tedeschi which lies in the shadow of Saint Peter's Basilica and wrong.

That cemetery goes back to the 15th century and it was for the Germans.

It has stations of the cross in the walls that surround the cemetery.

Father Thavis was here and then with at the time of the last plague, the yellow fever plague and he prayed for the intercession of Saint Rock, and he prayed that none of his parishioners would fall victims to the plague and ultimately none of them did.

Saint Rock was the patron of those people in Europe, either the Black Plague or the pestilence in the Middle Ages.

And so he chose him as patron.

Legend has it that Saint Rock, a medieval saint dressed as a wayfarer, was miraculously cured of a terrible skin disease.

Always at his feet is his faithful dog.

Saint Rock has become a patron saint for those seeking cures from illnesses.

The tiny shrine in the center of the cemetery is a tribute to him, and there's little room on one side that's filled with all kinds of braces and things that people used to overcome.

Illnesses and little plaques sing thanks to Saint Rock for the Cure and that sort of thing.

People would even put, in fact, ads in the newspaper at that time, you know, thanks to Saint Jude for curing my child or thanks to Saint Rock Song.

So though it may seem like it, not all religious customs and celebrations in New Orleans are Catholic.

In the spring, around the time of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, there's an event relatively new to the city, but based on ancient Jewish musical traditions held by Touro Synagogue.

It's called the Jazz Fest Shabbat, meaning Jazz Fest Sabbath.

The Jazz Fest was originated by Cantor Stephen Dubois, who served here for five years, and it was his vision to have the Jazz Fest Shabbat I'm inspired by the music of Rabbi Shlomo Kala Bass, who was a Hasidic rabbi based in New York City.

And to one selection for the evening has a familiar pop tunes and out for me, many people so I think it would be a great idea for every synagogue in America to try something like this.

But I think New Orleans is as particular to jazz and and swing music.

And so I think this is the only city it can really originate in this music tonight.

Was selected to be a little bit more upbeat and lively to keep in the spirit of Jazz Fest at a reception following the concert, providing the entertainment was a New Orleans based group whose music is influenced by Jewish folk songs.

The Klezmer All-Stars Hey, it's June 23rd Saint John's Eve, the day before the feast day of Saint John the Baptist this is a major observance of the practice of voodoo, a form of worship that is a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Roman Catholic beliefs.

Saint John's Eve celebrated on June 23rd, and somehow it became a mix.

This phenomenon of the summer solstice became mixed with the voodoo tradition of honoring Saint John.

But it's the voodoo edition the Catholic tradition and the European tradition of dealing with the summer solstice became intermeshed and it became transformed into the voodoo holiday.

Like the voodoo pantheon is a is a mixture of of spirits.

For example, if we were to look at the little statues, we would just as likely see Saint Joseph or the Virgin Mary as we might say, see Chango all these are together since 1899.

On the weekend after Labor Day, a procession has been held in a section of old Kenora today called River Town.

It begins at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church and is in honor of Saint Rosalie, Sicilian immigrants facing a disease that was killing their livestock, pray to the same saint that was said to have saved their ancestors in Sicily from the plague.

Their prayers were answered.

The livestock was spared organizing.

The procession is the Saint Rosalie Society.

People used to work their feeding their feet on a gravel.

There's not gravel or and people still walk back beated on in 1899 with the first procession and that was done by a lady Mrs. Acosta and she did it not with a statue, but she did it with a picture of Saint Rosalie.

And from 1899 to 1900, the men got involved in it, and in 1902 we formed the society in our family.

We've been in it since its inception and in the Christina's photos the shell has been in since its inception.

Other members of the society have been in it from a long long time, and we were all second generations are three generations of Italian immigrants into a kind of area I guess my song, The Foremost of Footsteps cofounder.

First of all, we do not pass.

We're going to join it.

Yeah, I think so.

The third joyful mystery of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Joy has come into the world.

Our Savior is born for us.

Our father who was in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

She was the patron saint of our Alamo community.

And that's that's how it got started in Cana, because when all these Sicilian people came and there were a lot of people who and they honored that over there, they honored here.

I three years later, I thought, oh, dear, I'll I love us.

I launched a New Orleans touch has been added to yet another Jewish ceremony, this time a more solemn one on the Jewish calendar.

The faithful of the conservative congregation have retired, gather for a service in an unlikely place.

According to Jewish law, the observance must begin on a Saturday at midnight.

The ceremony flicker on a boat, the Mississippi River boat, John James Audubon.

They hope comes from the Hebrew word saliha, which means forgive me or excuse me.

And lastly, phone is an aisle.

It is a prayer service that is done early in the morning leading up to the high holidays.

Rest assured that young people and it's a prayer and asking forgiveness.

So it's it's called penitential prayers in preparation for the high holidays.

It was New Orleans and we have the river and and the riverboat trip is kind of a New Orleans kind of thing to do.

And we wanted to get numbers of people out.

Seemed like more of an attraction.

Also like you can have one you can have you have a nice journey that people would make anyway.

It seemed like something to go to rather than just another service at the like this.

It's a time of turning to each other's pain.

Sometimes celebration and religious rules come into conflict as this rabbi who is also a musician, is well aware, because I'm Jewish and because I'm a observant Jew, I will not participate in musical events on Shabbat, which starts on Friday evening and goes through Saturday, early Saturday night.

And so I miss out on some funerals and I miss out on some good concerts that on Friday evening you can find out anywhere.

It's just it's just a lot of good music happens here.

So you miss out on more.

But but there's plenty that's happening the rest of the week, which is which is great.

Just about everywhere else.

It's just another autumn day.

But in New Orleans, November 1st has special meaning.

It's All Saints Day, a time to honor not only Saints, but loved ones.

Locals are themselves with square brushes, whitewash and flowers, and set out to clean the family tomb, a Roman Catholic custom that has been absorbed into the fabric of local culture, All Saints.

As a time when Catholics and non-Catholics gather at family tombs to not only clean them, but to remember relatives.

They came from Washington, D.C., and nothing like that's tolerated up there.

So the fact that, for instance, November the first was a civil holiday, and then everybody went out, including Protestants, and visited the graves of their ancestors that was all new and very welcome to me.

It to me showed a depth of culture All Saints Day has been part of the liturgical calendar for over a thousand years, but credit for the way it is observed in New Orleans goes to early French and Spanish settlers the days regarded primarily as a solemn occasion.

But that hasn't always been the case.

When I was a kid in between the two cemeteries, Saint Mary's and Saint Matthews, they had soft drink stands and candy, Apple stands and muffins and donuts and coffee stands.

And one of the earliest memories we have, because we have a picture of it was my grandmother knitted for my brother and me two white sweaters with cable stitch on them.

And my grandfather took us and got us candied apples and needless to say, we had candied apples all over us in the sweaters and cost, as usual, little Irish free for all on theme on All Saints Day in the cemetery.

Well, that's the interesting thing about living in a small town in Roman Catholic South Louisiana, because even the Baptists and the Methodists and the Presbyterians, along with the Episcopalians, of course, kept All Saints Day and put flowers on the grave and washed the grave and did everything that their Roman Catholic neighbors did.

It was part of the society, part of the culture that had permeated South Louisiana cemeteries are part of the city's landscape, often located in the middle of neighborhoods.

They have a definite life of their own and are even a tourist attraction when they see the cemeteries, when they're coming in.

And on the I-10, as they're quite different from cemeteries and in other parts of the country, and in particular in New England.

And they think that everybody here has them as a monument.

You know, being the Orleans, everybody who dies is almost treated like a famous person, you know, with the tombs and the vaults and everything.

In addition to flowers, families would decorate the tombs with beaded wired wreaths called Immortal Eyes, which were more permanent than flowers.

These tributes eventually fell out of fashion.

It was literally a holiday, not just a holy day.

I went to public school, but we still had a holiday.

And all the Catholic schools were closed, too.

And it was a day we visited the cemetery.

And usually the weather was gorgeous for some reason.

It was always a really wonderful fall, brisk day.

And we made a picnic of it and we went to Saint Louis Cemetery number three on Esplanade Avenue.

And we would visit the graves of our relatives and then we'd play in the cemetery was what's fun?

And we don't mind that our cemeteries are right in the middle of the city.

We like it.

We consider them a pictorial part of our city.

That's very valuable to us.

It's very moving experience for these but we do not shut death away as as people do in other cities.

You know, I don't want to make invidious comparisons, but, you know, in in in a lot of modern America today, death is is a bit repulsive to people.

They don't they don't know how to handle it.

New Orleanians seem to be much less afraid of it, much more at peace with it, and much more willing to live in big families where funerals are going to be fairly common.

And where they seem to be much more willing to accept the fact that they themselves will, you know, share this with all of humanity.

I know I my fear of death is greatly lessened here.

I mean, when I came home, I felt that I was I was safe in a way not safe from death, you understand, but just more in harmony with everything.

You don't come out here all the time showing up on All Saints Day.

You know what I mean?

And by saying to people in the end, if in the end, the graves, you know, we remember them with some flowers and I have lessons that have some answers that remembrance of the dead, that's we must fix it up for Christmas is just like a Christmas tree.

And it's so poignant.

I said, you know what I mean?

It's a little closeness, you know what I mean?

Like I say, they're not forgotten, even though they're not here anymore.

I tell my husband, I tell these relatives, I said, well, we've been married 50 years, and if he's gone, I'm not with him anymore.

I'm not going to forget you.

It gives us.

So I hope somebody remembers me and praises for me, you know, because I think it's a wonderful way to remember them.

But not that it's only this day that we remember them, you know, we all remember them all through the year.

She was 2 hours old over in a grave that didn't belong to us.

She forgot where it was.

She said, I remember a big tree, a symbol.

They did have a big tree right back there.

But it was struck by lightning and it fell down.

So she saw the tree and thought it was over there.

So she was helping somebody else do the across Lake Pontchartrain, on the North Shore, in the tiny community of Luke home, families gathered to honor their loved ones by lighting candles on the graves, carrying on a tradition thought to combine Catholic customs with those of Choctaw Indians, from whom many say Tammany Parish residents are descended I think this grew out of a tradition from the joke that Joan Collins used to poison the soul.

And, you know, in the 1700, that's when Parakeet came we heard over here, look, it came out and live with the Indians, and they used to build fires out in the woods, 50 feet of.

And they would they would purify this all night long.

So and I think he kind of brought that old dog gone outside with the candles and everything was making news.

They never had no next to nothing.

They had to have candles and plant animals and everything.

You have to have fire to keep the animals away.

And this is the shock us to really build the crosses we used to bury in the woods.

But my grandfather also, which you see the name three of you and he got the joke does to come in bury in here to the graves could be protected.

So this section was given to me.

This is old Choctaws and yonder we do multi scroll in that section to here in back walnuts, Indians all races green you wouldn't be for dead they would be out in the woods somewheres and the graves would be gone.

So they wanted to kind of preserve the heritage living what's unique about McComb is it becomes made up of some very large families.

They really go back a hundred 5200 years and their sense of relationship and those who've gone before them, grandparents, great grandparents that are really celebrated on this evening.

So there's a real connection there and this is a tradition.

This is a part of our Catholic religion.

We come here every year and be home.

We should be it go everybody in years a candidate for the sainthood right?

The whole place kind of close and they'll burn for hours.

Your daughter has passed away.

Welcome back into paradise where there will be no more sorrow, no more weeping, no more pain but the fullness of peace and joy with your son and the Holy Spirit forever and ever and while we're on All Saints Day, it would be an oversight if we didn't mention some Saints recognized and prospective ones who have a following in New Orleans.

People here who use are much more familiar and less formal with their saints than they are elsewhere.

They are friends of Almighty God in this special way.

And here upon Earth ourselves.

If we wanted something for instance, the president or some very important individual to grant us, we don't know him ourselves, but if we knew somebody that was close to him, we would ask them maybe to intercede for us.

Italian born mother Francis Xavier Cabrini led her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to America to care for the large influx of Italian immigrants.

In the 1890s, she spent time in New Orleans and eventually became a naturalized citizen.

Mother Cabrini was canonized in 1946.

The orphanage she built and lived in is now a girls high school.

We would go up as as the girls would up in her bedroom and she was very short, maybe about four feet.

And her bed is about this big also.

And we were just, you know, it's such a sacred place now when the nuns were looking like we touch her bed and maybe jump up on it, you know, and just take turns watching each other that nobody would come in.

But that was always a, and I think a saint, you know, lived here and worked here and walked the floor that we walked was incredible.

But, you know, she was such a tiny woman and to and to have such influence and to build the the convents and the orphanages that she did in that time, you know, and she was sickly and and everything else.

And so tiny.

She's about 48 or something.

For feeding, you know, like I've seen statues that are bigger than she was, you know, a statues of her she made it her mission to assist the immigrant Italian communities wherever they might be found.

In 1866, Bavarian born priest Francis Xavier Silas arrived in New Orleans coming to the aid of his parishioners suffering from yellow fever.

He died of the dreaded disease the following year.

There is a mass held in his honor.

Each October at the church he served Saint Mary's assumption on his way back up in the Bronx.

And we've been celebrating for over 30 years in a solemn fashion, commemorating his death, commemorating his memory to honor him because of the great devotion people have to him and of the prayers that they've offered to him and have been heard over these many years.

And ever since then, he has been a powerhouse of prayer for the people of this area and for indeed for the whole world.

The faithful who pray to follow the sea loss are still waiting for his canonization by the church.

In this news, footage from the 1970s, his remains are shown being returned to Saint Mary's after the renovation of the structure.

Apparently it was his personality that attracted everybody to him and he was, as I say, he was a sought after confessor and apparently a very gentle and very persuasive man.

And then there saints who never set foot in New Orleans, but who have a legion of fans here.

Rio de Janeiro, of course, is is filled with spirits and people who believe in spirits and ghosts and New Orleans.

And in some ways too, it's just that we call them Saints St Patrick, Saint Joseph, Saint Michael Saints.

You'd say expedited, but it's it's really a very much the same kind of religion.

We personify our beliefs we think we're being looked over by guardians and we think they're right here.

The story I got was that there were two Saints Saint Expedite Light and saint fragility.

And the devotion to these two saints grew out of the arrival of some crates of statues of saints arriving from Italy and on one was the word expedite and the other one was fragile expedite fragile and of course, the people who unpacked these statues of saints thought that those must be the names of the saints.

And they were then established as saint expedite and saints, fragile or fragile.

So the one that that seems to linger on it, of course, is Saint Expedite.

But there appears to be much more to this story.

My wife and I have traveled in Spain and lived in Spain for a while, and we knew that the early Spanish Governor Galvez, who participated in the campaigns of the American Revolution, came from a small town near where we lived in Spain.

It's a town called My Chart of the Year, and we started making the rounds of the side altars altars dedicated to the devotion to the various saints.

And as we came to one, it said, Son Expeditor and I said, That's him, that really is a saint expedite.

And we find him here in the hometown of Galvez and I wonder if there's some sort of a connection to the the devotion to Saint Expedite, whether perhaps the Galvez is or the Spaniards brought the concept here in his statue.

He has his foot on a Black Raven era with and the word coming out of the Raven's mouth is cross, which means tomorrow.

But he's holding up the cross.

And on the word on the cross is the word hoodia in Latin which means today so saint expedite it done today and not tomorrow.

So he is anti procrastination and if you really needed something done very quickly you could go pray to saint expedite and you could make what's called the flying know vino you went over into the Saint Louis number one cemetery and you stood in the four corners of the cemetery and said two decades of the rosary and then you came and stood in the middle of the cemetery and finished it off with a nice stick if you were going to receive your favor.

It was granted within 36 hours, but you had to pay saint expedite and what you paid him was either an ounce of table salt or a wedge of pound cake.

And during the exhibit at Noma people actually track Saint Expedite to Noma.

When I went there, I asked one of the guards during the exhibit, Has anything happened?

Strange you said, Yeah, people keep sneaking in here and pouring salt and leaving pieces of cake at the foot of this dog on statue.

He has become one of the patron saint of the followers of Voodoo.

And he has he has made it into what I'm told, into the voodoo pantheon at the moment.

And then there's Saint Anthony of Padua, traditionally shown with the Christ Child.

Saint Anthony was known for his preaching skills and much more said is very powerful, saying you don't mess with Saint Anthony.

And I tell the staff, we have a statue of him in the dining room, you know, and once somebody committed the unpardonable sin of putting a hat on his head and I drew the whole staff together and I said, now you do not mess with Saint Anthony.

You know, only he is major, you know, a powerful thing is he can he can work.

He can find anything for you.

He can get anything done for you.

But you certainly don't go putting hats on his head.

So the staff understands and there have been times when people have come to visit the house.

Just a few informal groups have come through the house and some of the people have slipped coins to Saint Anthony's hands as a little token of respect.

And it's really quite astonishing but he's only one of New Orleans men.

Favorite things.

New Orleans really loves it.

And there are lots of kids named it me thank them now for the mentally ill, very, very popular saint.

Oh, she a lot of people come in and this was some years back and again, a very popular prayer card for a saint.

People always praying for you, though, the mental health, the fast thing, Saint Expedite or Saint Raymond?

The money.

I think my my patron saint is Saint Society's chief.

The painter theta of musician plays bad harp played bad but my breath but she's keeping me out of trouble.

You know, I've always like Saint Christopher, but they threw him out for some reason.

I don't know what he did, but he must have it must have been beneath him.

Though it may sound strange, a 19th century Indian leader from Illinois has ended up as a saintly figure in many black spiritual churches in New Orleans.

His name is Black Hawk.

Yeah, he was a great Indian and proud to have a leader.

He was a leader.

And you see him violent down and violent down.

The main prayer in each case that he'll always win this case because he knew how to put God first.

He's referred to his father, Black Hawk, quite often.

And for people who have to struggle with existence on a daily level, I think Black Hawk is quite understandable as a spirit figure in much the way that, you know, Catholics pray to Saint Anthony if you have lost something or Saint Jude if you desperately need something, you know, there is something in the human psyche that has a great yearning for these benevolent and protective figures.

And in that sense, I think Black Hawk is very much at one with the pantheon of spirit figures.

So in this church and others, even though he's not recognized as a saint, Black Hawk is held in such high esteem that many spiritual churches hold a service in the winter to honor him.

What has happened in in these Black Hawk ceremonies is that a bond has been forged across time and generations in cultures where in the memory historically of an Indian warrior has been summoned as one to stand as a as a symbol that people can endure, that they can withstand the hardness and the pressures and the difficulties that life throws at us every day.

There was a connection to black people in New Orleans, many of whom have Indian ancestors or Indian blood.

And Indians, too, were viewed as a symbol of resistance against the white colonists.

Africans and Indians shared many cultural similarities and you know, all cultures rely on protective figures of one kind or another.

These are not gods prayed to.

These are spirits who are venerated, who are spoken to and asked to serve as intercessors with God.

It's a different that's why it was made different, because we all are different.

But it's one light, one fate, one baptism, one God.

Above all, Saint Teresa of Avila Catholic Church is in the Colosseum Square neighborhood.

This tiny church has changed little in the last century.

It has been a church that has welcomed immigrants, originally Irish, later Hispanic, and more recently a group with Hispanic, Indian and African roots.

Descendants of slaves shipwrecked off the Central American coast who intermingled with the Carib Indians, who offered protection to they are called Garifuna.

People have been trickling into the United States over the years, especially after the Second World War.

Because there were people, there were men who came to the United States during the Second World War to serve as policemen while the American soldiers were abroad fighting during the Second World War.

So while there was a trickle before the Second World War, there were more people coming after.

Even today, people are still bringing in their families from Honduras, bringing in their families from other parts of Central America, like Belize and Guatemala.

There, many of them have become citizens of the United States.

How are you going around looking in whatever?

Since 1984 at the annual grouping, a mass has been held each November and is celebrated in the group in a language as well as English and Spanish.

This celebration is distinctly different from the traditional Catholic mass religious ceremony, which is soon to go off through to the African side of origin.

The people.

This is a rhythmic people and the drums are very important and in keeping I suppose with Scripture, Praise the Lord and dance and songs that there is a lot of drumming and a lot of dancing.

At the beginning during the offertory and then at the end of the liturgy the people sort of understand that there is a need to give more than just the bread and the wine so they give of themselves what they produce.

But by the way, I, by the way, have a holiday.

I bought the celebration is a major part of life in New Orleans, and religious celebration will always be there for those who just keep the faith.

There's never a time when people in New Orleans don't have a party to look forward to and all the better for it.

But I think that we know how to be serious when we need to be serious.

And I think that our very best days are yet ahead of us.

This city has a kind of schizophrenic image.

On the one hand, New Orleans is the city that care forgot.

Mardi Gras fading mansions, a kind of hedonistic place.

And yet the opposite side of that coin is a profoundly spiritual sensibility.

Which give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil men City of Spirits.

Religious celebration in New Orleans is made possible by the WUIS Producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of Channel 12 local productions Dreams.

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Dreams keep us growing.

Dreams keep us thriving.

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