(OSV News) — OSV News spoke with Archbishop James F. Checchio of New Orleans days after his archdiocese’s June 13-14 consecration to the Sacred Heart, which followed a consecration of the U.S. by the nation’s Catholic bishops.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OSV News: You and your fellow U.S. Catholic bishops recently consecrated the nation to the Sacred Heart. Why did you feel it was important to do the same for the archdiocese?
Archbishop Checchio: I was on the administrative committee (for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops), so I knew this consecration was what we were planning for the country and its 250th anniversary. I’ve been part of those discussions.
In the Archdiocese of New Orleans, they’ve been through a lot, and the diocese is very historic. (The archdiocese was established in 1793 as the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, partitioned and renamed in 1826, and elevated as an archdiocese in 1850. Its St. Louis Cathedral traces its origins to 1722. – Editor)
So I thought that we should take advantage of this graced moment for our country and add to it. I talked to our presbyteral council and the council of deans about it, and said, “I think we should do this consecration here too, at all of our parishes, and in our homes by having everyone enthrone the Sacred Heart in their homes. We need Jesus’s healing. We need his mercy. And this is a great moment for us to do it.”
They were very enthusiastic about it, and we planned a nine-week novena in preparation, with a different prayer intention each week. And then the consecration happened in all the parishes; every pastor did it at all the Masses, and I performed it at the (St. Louis) Cathedral and at a couple of parishes that I visited.
Everybody was given an image of the Sacred Heart to take home along with instructions on how to enthrone (that is, prominently display) the Sacred Heart in your home. Our hope is that everybody did that. We ran out of the images in a bunch of parishes; they seemed enthusiastic about it.
And now we’re entering a nine-week pastoral formation evangelization period, where the fruits of the consecration — which Pope Pius XII (in his 1956 encyclical “Haurietis Aquas”) described as the priesthood, the Eucharist and (devotion to) the Blessed Mother — will be shared.
OSV News: Talk about the specific ways in which you’re looking for those fruits to manifest in the archdiocese.
Archbishop Checchio: I’ve asked all the priests to renew their commitment to a daily rosary during this time, to keep our Blessed Mother close to us. Plus we have the feasts of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16) and the Assumption (Aug. 15) within this time period. Obviously the Blessed Mother brought the Sacred Heart into the world by her yes, by her fiat, so we ask her to help us to emulate her — to bring Jesus into the world through our yes to being his disciples.
That Aug. 15 weekend will be “Welcome Home” Sunday. I’m asking every parishioner in the archdiocese to invite one person to come to Mass — someone who’s searching for Jesus, someone who’s drifted away from the Church, someone who’s hurt by the Church. And I’ve asked the pastors to prepare parishes to be people that weekend who are like the father in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), who run out to greet them and welcome them.
For the gift of the priesthood, I’ve asked them (pastors and the faithful) to pray for our priests and pray for more vocations, and to ask young men in whom you see the qualities you look for in a priest if they want to be priests. I said, “You could be the instrument of the Holy Spirit to open the hearts to it.” The surveys say the number one reason people don’t respond (to vocation calls) is they were never asked.
I also asked the priests and the Eucharistic ministers who visit the homebound to take an image to them of the Sacred Heart, and to ask them to offer their loneliness, their illnesses, their sufferings for more vocations to the priesthood here in New Orleans.
With the Eucharist, we have of course the commitment to Sunday Mass, but I’ve asked for a listing of all the adoration chapels and times of adoration in the archdiocese. We have it in one place so that people would know, make sure all the time slots are filled.
So those are the fruits that I hope come from this consecration, and which will contribute to our healing and growing more in love with Jesus and His Sacred Heart and sharing it with others.
OSV News: The Archdiocese of New Orleans, as you noted, has indeed been through a lot with clerical abuse scandals and a long-running, costly bankruptcy. How do you hope that the consecration will help heal those wounds and perhaps open up a vision for the future for the archdiocese?
Archbishop Checchio: Before I came here, I read in the newspapers about what has happened here. I did a lot of reading, and when I read the newspapers, it was pretty darn scary.
What I found when I got here was a lot of beauty. There’s such good faith here, and there’s so much excitement for the faith and the love of family, and a deep loyalty to traditions here. They love traditions, ecclesial and otherwise.
The archdiocese is ripe for this consecration. They want the healing. I try to visit a few parishes every weekend, and everyone’s just ready to do something. They want the healing, and they want the Church to be a shining light in Louisiana.
And they’re proud of the Church. They’re ashamed of what happened, as we all are, and hurt by what happened, the damage to trust (in the Church) and all of that. But there’s a great love of Jesus still, and even a love for the Church.
So I think it (the consecration) is just a good opportunity for us to mobilize in a common effort to express our love for Jesus.
I’m very optimistic here. The Church here is very robust. On Good Friday, there’s a nine-church walk, and I went and saw so many young families with strollers, walking with their kids to the nine churches. I went to the first place, and I never got out of there because the people just lined up to come and say hello and get a blessing. I was there for a few hours, standing in the middle of the church.
There’s an enthusiasm for the faith here and a love for the faith. And certainly Sacred Heart fits with all that perfectly.
So many of our problems in life come from us not receiving the love of God properly, because it seems impossible. It just seems impossible that he could love us that much, right? But we know what he did for us.
A healthy heart has to receive blood, and it has to be able to give blood — to be strong and elastic. And it’s the same thing with our spiritual hearts. We have to be able to receive his (Jesus’) love in order to give it, to share it.
The Sacred Heart is so simple, so beautiful, so theological — and so practical.
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
