Bishop Cheri had a song in his heart for God

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

There was rarely an occasion, either inside or outside of church, when Bishop Ferd Cheri couldn’t find a song to sing.

And, more often than not, the tune he would start belting out was one of the thousands of hymns he had collected in amassing the world’s foremost private depository of Gospel music, cataloged over a lifetime and resurrected after the collection was swallowed up by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

At Bishop Cheri’s Funeral Mass at St. Louis Cathedral on April 1, Franciscan Father John Doctor said the gift of music that Bishop Cheri possessed flowed from a heart grateful for God’s power in the sorrows and joys of his life.

“Our brother Bishop Ferd's whole life was centered on the Word of God, which was also enhanced by his love for Gospel music,” said Father Doctor, who knew Bishop Cheri for more than 30 years and was his formation advisor when the New Orleans priest discerned a vocational journey to become a Franciscan in the early 1990s. “Every time I had to drive some place – I don't care where it was or how long it was – Gospel music had to be playing in the car.”

At Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois, where then-Father Cheri served as student chaplain to a majority-white student body, “you heard Gospel music always coming out of the campus ministry office. We never stop being fed by the Word; we never stop singing that Word; we never stop becoming that Word.”

Father Doctor joked that when Father Cheri was in the Franciscan novitiate, learning the way of St. Francis, he never paused in compiling records, tapes and sheet music for his burgeoning collection. He often would open and close prayer meetings with a Gospel hymn, and, even as an auxiliary bishop in New Orleans conferring the sacrament of confirmation, he would break into song during the homily.

“I can't tell you how many times our brother Ferd would always get everybody singing – everybody,” Father Doctor said. “He would sing, ‘If anyone asks you who I am, who I am, who I am, if anybody asks you who I am, tell them I'm a child of God.’

“And, we realize, that Gospel song is really saying to us that we’ll always, always be a child in God’s eyes. Bishop Ferd would ask you today, ‘Do we know that? Do we believe that in our life?’”

Whenever Father Doctor asked Bishop Ferd to lead the opening prayer, he usually would choose “One More Day” because “this is what God calls us to each day – ‘One more day, one more day, I thank you, Lord, just for one more day. One more day, the Lord has made a way.’ And, then, the second verse: ‘One more chance, one more chance. I thank God just for one more chance, one more chance to be the best that I can. I thank God just for one more chance.’”

Father Doctor said the Quincy staff and students always were touched by “One More Day” because it let them know “that each day has a new beginning.”

“The time he would spend preparing a homily or a talk or getting ready for a revival,” Father Doctor said. “He would study that Word. And, what was that Word of God calling us to?

“I believe Bishop Ferd would say to us, ‘It’s not enough to read the Word. It’s not enough to hear the Word. And, it’s also not enough to reflect on the Word, and it’s not enough to become the Word. We must proclaim the Word to everyone that we encounter, and in what we say and what we do. Bishop Ferd reminds us that by our very baptism, we are to make visible the Word of God in our wounded and broken world.”

Citing the second reading from St. Paul about nothing being able to separate a Christian from the love of God, Father Doctor said Bishop Cheri “strove to keep himself rooted in Christ’s love, even when faced with injustice, especially systemic racism in our society, within our church. He promoted the gift, the blessing of diversity and inclusion. He upheld the dignity, the worth and the value of everyone.

“For our brother, Bishop Ferd, any injustice, he would say, calls us to greater integrity as men and women of the Gospel. We are God’s children in the world. And, if we are God’s children in the world, we’re brothers and sisters to one another. We need to reverence, respect and uphol;d each other’s dignity.”

 Father Doctor pinpointed one characteristic of Bishop Cheri’s personality that endeared him to others.

“He always had a smile on his face and a sparkle in his eyes,” he said. “That’s what attracted people. He definitely possessed the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. When I reflect on Bishop Cheri's life, I see his whole life as a homily of what it means to walk the walk of faith and what it means to walk in the footsteps of the poor, the humble and the crucified Christ, especially as a Friar Minor (Franciscan)."

Bishop Cheri, a native of New Orleans, 71, died March 21 after a lengthy illness. He was ordained as a bishop in 2015 and had served since then as auxiliary bishop of New Orleans. He was administrator of St. Peter Claver Church since 2021 but was forced from active ministry last year because of heart and kidney problems.

Father Doctor made special reference to the processional song, "All of Me: An Ode to Sister Thea" by M. Roger Holland II, which was dedicated to the total gift of self exhibited by Francsican Sister of Perpetual Adoration, who died of cancer in 1990 at age 52.

Father Doctor said, "I can't help but imagine that when sister death brought (Bishop Cheri) before our Triune God, he sang that refrain: 'I give you my all. I gave you my all when I was here in this world, and I bring you all of me. I bring you all that I have. I bring you all of me – not a part of me. I give it all back to you.'"

Bishop Cheri was buried in the cathedral sanctuary to the right of the altar.

"Bishop Cheri knew who he was as a person, and he also knew whose he was – that he belonged to the Lord Jesus," Archbishop Aymond said. "He never backed down from that in his life and in his ministry. His episcopal motto was ‘God is My Strength,’ and that is absolutely true. God was his strength. And, in his episcopal ministry and the way in which he lived his life of discipleship, he became strength for others.”

At a prayer service for Bishop Cheri at St. Peter Claver Church on March 30, Jesuit Father Joseph Brown, a longtime friend of Bishop Cheri dating from their time at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, said he neither expected nor campaigned to become a bishop.

“I have seen Ferd Cheri in the desert as much as we have seen him on the mountain,” Father Brown said. “He wasn't trying to be a bishop.”

Father Brown said when he came into New Orleans for the funeral, a man at Loyola University told him he appreciated Bishop Cheri’s singing at confirmation.

 “Someone I had never met before wanted me to know before I came (to the prayer service) that this was what he and other people felt made him feel most alive,” Father Brown said.

Rather than mourn Bishop Cheri’s passing, Father Brown suggested to the St. Peter Claver congregation that they pick up his torch.

“If you believe what he did and you are proud of what he did and you are grateful for what he did for you, act like it,” Father Brown said. “He can’t be the last (Black bishop). He believed in us. We are so grateful for Bishop Cheri. Can we act like he was grateful for us and live up to what he saw in us that we didn't see in ourselves? That’s the only thing that matters.”

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