Body of 19th-century bishop reinterred at Mississippi basilica

Published: 2008-01-24

NATCHEZ, Miss. (CNS) -- Freezing temperatures and fleeting snow swept through the normally mild-weather Mississippi River town of Natchez Jan. 19 as the first bishop of Mississippi, John Joseph Chanche, was reinterred on the grounds of St. Mary Basilica 155 years after his death. "I think Bishop Chanche would be very pleased to be back here in Natchez, where he wanted to be," said Cardinal William H. Keeler, retired archbishop of Baltimore and principal celebrant and homilist for the reinterment Mass. Bishop Chanche, who was born in Baltimore to refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), was ordained a Sulpician priest in 1819 and served as president of the old St. Mary's College in Baltimore from 1834 until he was named the first bishop of the Diocese of Natchez by Pope Gregory XVI in 1841. He died in 1852 of cholera in Maryland after attending the First Plenary Council there. Unable to be returned to his diocese, he was buried in the Cathedral Cemetery and later reinterred in the new Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore.

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