NEWS RELEASE
(for immediate release)
Southern Jesuit mystique
and history examined in
new book of biographies
The Jesuit cemeteries of Grand Coteau, La., and Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala.,
have aroused the curiosity of historians and casual observers for quite some time. If these
headstones could talk, they would reveal intriguing episodes in Southern history going all the
way back to the 18th century.
What’s the story behind the men who are buried here? What were they like? What work
did they do?
The answers to these and many other questions can be found in the new book titled
Southern Jesuit Biographies: Pastors and Preachers, Builders and Teachers of the New
Orleans Province. The main author is Rev. Jerome Neyrey, a Jesuit priest who lives in Grand
Coteau; a number of biographies were contributed by the late Rev. Thomas Clancy, also a
Jesuit. The book was published by Acadian House Publishing of Lafayette, La.
The book contains brief biographies of some 220 Jesuit priests and brothers who lived
and worked in the New Orleans Mission and Province over the past three centuries. Among
them are iconic figures such as “the Father of WWL-TV,” “the Jubilarian of 50 Plagues,” “the
Angel of the Slums,” “the Silver Sage of Banks Street,” and “The Lone Wolf of the
Southwest Mission.”
Over the years, Southern Jesuits have been busy pastoring churches, teaching in high
schools and colleges, leading retreats, and promoting peace and social justice. Their work has
taken them from New Orleans to Dallas, from Miami to El Paso, and to the mission fields of
Asia and South America.
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Page 2 – Jesuit book release
Their stories – which had been obscured by the passage of time – were pieced together
primarily from material in the Jesuit Archives at Loyola University in New Orleans.
The biographies in the book are divided into three groups, three eras in which the men
did the bulk of their work: the Mission Era (1700-1907); the Building & Expansion Era
(1907-1968); and the Modern Era (1968-2014).
The 256-page volume contains 64 pages of photographs of Jesuit priests and brothers and
features a map of the 11-state province as well as a map of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, where Southern
Jesuits did mission work from the mid-1930s through the 1960s. It also contains a glossary of
terms, an extensive index, and a time line that details important events and dates in the
establishment of the Jesuits’ New Orleans mission and province.
The book includes a brief narrative history of the Jesuits in the Southern U.S. that details
their work, starting circa 1700, when they began ministering to Native American people as
well as European and colonial settlers.
For many years, the New Orleans Province stretched from New Mexico to the Carolinas.
In the summer of 2014, the province was joined with the Missouri Province to form the new
U.S. Central and Southern Province.