Bishop Cheri’s legacy honored at Xavier, Gospel Fest

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion HeraId

In his lifetime of pastoral ministry as a seminarian, diocesan priest, Franciscan friar and bishop, New Orleans Auxiliary Bishop Fernand Cheri, who died March 21, collected a trove of sacred relics, medals and crosses and slowly built a personal, 6,000-CD library of Gospel music so extensive it could not fit inside a single room.

Bishop Cheri’s love for the sacred music that expressed the depths of his Black Catholic experience and his devotion to the saints are being celebrated with two projects.

Xavier home to collection
Xavier University of Louisiana is now home to an archival collection of Bishop Cheri’s artifacts, which will remain on public display on the third floor of the university’s library at least through next spring.

In addition, the archdiocesan Office of Black Catholic Ministries has renamed in his honor the Gospel Music Festival that then-Father Cheri started in 1978. The “Bishop Fernand Cheri III, OFM Gospel Music Festival” will be held Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. at The Historic Carver Theater, 2101 Orleans Ave., New Orleans.

Richard Cheri, with his late brother's collection of Gospel music.

Bishop Cheri’s brother Richard, who is the director of music for Our Lady Star of the Sea Church as well as the director of the Archdiocesan Mass Choir, said the family is thrilled to see important elements of the bishop’s life collected for public display.

“We thought everything would be utilized more at an institution like Xavier, so his music collection is there, the scores of sheet music, his books, his sermons,” Cheri said. “We also brought some of his vestments there, as well as his ring, crosier and miter.”

A Xavier graduate
Bishop Cheri also was a theology graduate of Xavier’s Institute for Black Catholic Studies.

“We thought that with him being an alumnus and Xavier being the only Black Catholic HBCU, it would be appropriate to have the collection there,” Cheri said.

Xavier archivist Vincent Barraza said the university’s ties to St. Katharine Drexel, who used her fortune and established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to further Catholic education for Blacks and Native Americans, also made the acquisition of Bishop Cheri’s artifacts important.

At the time of his death, Bishop Cheri was one of seven African-American bishops.

“It’s actually one of the most exciting collections that we’ve brought in since I’ve been here (over the last eight years),” Barraza said. “When we were approached by the Cheri family to bring such an amazing collection from such a historic individual, I was very excited, because a lot of these are things we have never taken in before.”

The collection includes several relics of saints, including Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos; a pectoral cross given to him by the late New Orleans Auxiliary Bishop Harold Perry, the first African-American Catholic bishop in modern times; and the papal bull, written in Latin calligraphy, that announced his appointment as bishop in 2015.

Several QR codes on the display cases send viewers to a website for more information on the bishop’s life.

“We wanted to make sure it is exhibited very prominently outside of our archives in a space that is open,” Barraza said. “Even if the archives (office) is closed, you can still come to the library and see the display.”

Barraza said he expects to draw interest from Catholic schools in the archdiocese. Thousands of Bishop Cheri’s CDs of Gospel music are stored there, but there is currently no way for people to listen to them individually.

Hundreds of homilies
Bishop Cheri kept hundreds of homilies, which he filed alphabetically according to topic, such as “The Prodigal Son,” and so on.

“It was really, really interesting to me to see that,” Barraza said. “As an archivist, it’s my job to make sure those things stay in the traditional order that he had. It gives you a little light into his own personal life as to how he chose to organize his collection.”

Renaming the Gospel Music Festival in Bishop Cheri’s memory is appropriate because of his love for sacred music, said Dr. Ansel Augustine, director of the Black Catholic Ministries office.

“There are many of us in this archdiocese who have benefitted from his love, his care and his pastoral sense,” Augustine said. “For us to honor him in this way shows his legacy and what Gospel music stands for, which is a way of giving hope to our trials, our joys and knowing that whatever we’re facing, God is there. Bishop lived that out.”

Admission to the Gospel concert is free. Several Gospel choirs from the archdiocese will perform. Each patron is asked to bring non-perishable food items for Second Harvest Food Bank.

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