The Story of One Parish and Its Devotion to the Sacred Heart

Our Lord’s Sacred Heart has sustained Connie Anderson’s family parish for almost 100 years.

Since apostolic times, private prayer and personal devotions have helped shape our Church’s authentic teaching and strengthen its Catholic identity. During the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Marian apparitions and devotions, most notably to Our Lady of Lourdes (1858), and Our Lady of Fatima (1917), corroborated and helped develop the dogmas of Mary’s Immaculate Conception (1854) and Assumption into Heaven (1950). While this era was known as the “Age of Mary,” often overlooked is the rich variety of prayers and devotions, particularly those centering on Christ, which strengthen Catholic perseverance through trial and suffering.

The legacy of a strong love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Like most Catholics around the world who lived during the “Marian Age,” my maternal grandparents grew up with a deep love for Our Lady’s Rosary. However, they had an equally strong love for Our Lord’s Sacred Heart, to whom their church parish was dedicated. Their first pastor, Fr. Dominic Blasco, came to Louisiana in 1914 as a young seminarian from Sicily, fortuitously bringing his homeland’s much-loved devotion to Christ the King.

According to my grandparents, Fr. Blasco earned the right to be called “Father.” He guided Sacred Heart Church’s 4,000 parishioners through the Great Depression and World War II’s severe challenges. Inspiring Masses, regular devotions, and seasonal novenas, including the 40-Hours Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and First Friday Masses to Jesus’ Sacred Heart, helped Fr. Blasco and his parishioners forge a cohesive spiritual family. Their virile witness to Faith brought my dad into our church and fortified my own belief many years later.

Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish was founded in 1928 primarily to serve Baton Rouge’s expanding Italian population. Fr. Blasco, who was multilingual, could easily communicate with and relate to his parishioners. Many had just come from Europe and spoke little or no English. Many also were not literate.

Fr. Blasco took the spiritual work of mercy “to instruct” seriously. One year after founding the parish, he completed the new school, the first parochial school building in Baton Rouge. When the Depression hit, parishioners volunteered as teachers, custodians, and school cafeteria workers to keep good Catholic education alive for their children. Some students were the first in their families to receive formal schooling, which included sound lessons in the Baltimore Catechism.

On behalf of my mother and her sister, my grandparents also did their part. My grandmother managed the cafeteria. My grandfather helped with a variety of projects through the Knights of Columbus and the Ushers’ Society.

When the new church’s construction began in 1941, Fr. Blasco commissioned the well-known Dutch Benedictine monk Dom Gregory deWit to paint its interior. For centuries, Catholic churches were decorated with artwork of all kinds to teach the faithful. DeWit’s colorful frescos were inspired by Sicilian Byzantine mosaics, which Fr. Blasco greatly admired not only for their elegance but also for their ability to catechize.

While deWit’s twenty-eight, highly stylized murals were (and still are) startlingly dramatic, his imposing figure of Jesus, painted in the Pantocrator over the main altar, leaves viewers with the most lasting impression. Flanked on either side of the sanctuary by “two formidable warrior angels,” and statues of the Hebrew Priest Melchizedek and the Hebrew Prophet Malachi,

DeWit’s masterpiece of the Victorious Christ dominates the interior. Based on a mosaic in Sicily’s Monreale Cathedral, the overwhelmingly powerful Christ leaves no doubt that here is a King above all others. (Sacred Heart Church)

The protective unity of prayer

When New Orleans Archbishop Rummel, a German native, dedicated the church on May 17, 1942, the United States was at war with the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The multicultural parish surely took comfort, being united in prayer beneath deWit’s commanding portrait of Jesus inspired by Fr. Blasco’s profound devotion.

Ten years later, on November 2, 1962, I experienced similar feelings of protective unity during Sacred Heart School’s First Friday Holy Hour. Six days earlier, with the help of Pope John XXIII, the Cuban Missile Crisis was peacefully resolved, averting worldwide nuclear destruction. Before the monstrance on the altar and facing the larger-than-life figure of Jesus, I saw gratitude on the adults’ faces. The powerful scene wordlessly emphasized our parish family’s safety under Christ’s outstretched arms.

Fr. Blasco was made a Monsignor in 1947, slightly less than one year before his untimely death. Growing divisions in our country and increasing worldwide threats prompt us to return to his heart-felt devotions and ask for his intercession. Monsignor Blasco, pray for us to Christ Our King!

Learn more about Sacred Heart Parish

Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, Our History
Sacred Heart of Jesus School, Our School History

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Copyright 2024 Connie Anderson
Images: Courtesy of Sacred Heart Church Archives and QH Productions, all rights reserved.