April 2008 - Father Roch Naquin

Father Roch (pronounced "Rock") speaks in a soft French accent, but he is native American - the first native American priest to have been ordained in southern Louisiana 45 years ago.  Now 75, he retired five years ago to a modest little house on Isle de Jean Charles, very near to where he grew up.  Like most homes in the bayou, it's built high off the ground, as as if it's on stilts, to protect it from storm surges and flooding.

The hurricanes of 2005 battered this area, and the salt water intrusion scalded the trees into grey and twisted shapes.  But the delicate ecological balance in the bayou had already been threatened, by oil exploration in the Gulf and by the network of canals sliced through the area to speed transport.

But in his neat-as-a-pin kitchen, Father talks about the old days. He is serving up some gumbo for lunch that is pitch black. There are always great arguments in the bayou over who makes the best gumbo, and this was some that a parishioner had shared. 

Father Roch's grandfather was a chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribes. Father was one of six children.  "Mom and Dad were people of prayer.  They taught us our prayers, first in French and later in English."

They embraced the Faith,  but it was not always reciprocated.  In the segregated 1940s, deep pockets of prejudice existed in some parts of the bayou. Father Roch's grandfather was denied the opportunity to be a Confirmation sponsor - a slight the old man recalled years later with emotion that was still raw.  A brother-in-law was not permitted to serve on the altar because he was an Indian.

One church in the bayou had wooden bars which separated whites from non-whites. Father Roch remembers when those bars came down with desegregation in the 1960s.

"The pastor loaded up those bars in his truck and delivered them to the Archbishop in New Orleans."  The area where Father Roch now lives is in the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, which was carved from the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 1977.

Educational opportunities were limited for native Americans, too, in the 1940s. Father went to "grammar school" in a grocery store. A French-speaking professor would teach a handful of students.  Later, Roch and his father would ferry students by pirogue (a flat-bottomed canoe common in the bayous) to classes in a chapel at the end of Pointe-aux-Chenes. 

His first education ended at seventh grade, because there were no eighth grade books for him and his fellow students. So Father Roch dropped out of school and went to work on an oyster boat.  The life was hard.  The oystermen would sometimes be out on the water for 27 days straight, with only a few days off to visit family.  Roch would have strange dreams:  "I dreamed that was not able to find my way back to the boat."  But he had another, secret dream: to become a priest.

On one visit home, he bought a very fine suitcase.  His family teased him,  "That suitcase is too fancy for someone who works on the boats."

The suitcase, he hoped, would take him to the seminary.  The seed for a vocation had been planted by Father Marcel Fourcade, a French-speaking priest who used to talk to young Roch  "about the life of priests and sisters."    When Roch confided to his mother that he wanted to be a priest, she rejoiced.  "When my mother was married, she prayed that if she ever had a son, that he would become a priest."

There was one problem:  he needed to complete the eighth grade.  Father Fourcade looked into enrolling the young boy in one of the schools in Houma, "but neither the public nor the Catholic schools would take a chance on us."  So the priest arranged for him to board with a Catholic family in Thibodaux to finish out his grammar schooling.

He entered St. Joseph High School Seminary in Covington, La. on September 11, 1950, in a class of about 60 students. Only about a quarter of them made it all the way through to ordination.

To earn a little spending money, he and another young man spent the summer of 1953 selling EXTENSION Magazine door to door. They started in Bunkie, La., in the central part of the state, "but we would have starved if we had to live on what we made there," Father chuckles, so they moved further south "and we did very well indeed." On his e visits as a magazine salesman, the young seminarian tried out his preaching skills.  "I was shaking in my boots, but I did it."

He completed his studies for the priesthood  at St. John's Home Mission Seminary in Little Rock, Ark. In 1962, the only native American in his class.

Few priests actually "retire" these days, and Father Roch is no exception. He frequently celebrates Mass in the churches of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, particularly the Native American Masses to mark the feast of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. He blesses the shrimp boats that ply the waters of the bayou, and he is active in the diocesan groups who are reviving the native American culture. 

He is a beloved figure to the Catholics in southern Louisiana, a "hero" who overcame tremendous odds to serve them as their priest.

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