A Q&A With Archbishop James Checchio

Catholic News Service (CNS): When Pope Leo started his pontificate, he highlighted the themes of unity and peace. How do you see your role as Archbishop in helping promote that mission? 

Archbishop Checchio: That's certainly a mission that we all want and need in our world today. So it was very providential that was his message. And he also, I think, would additionally use charity, huh? And they're kind of the basis of the Augustinian community, you know, unity, charity, peace, truth. So I think he was a perfect fit for our times for what we need in our world these days. 

So my role is obviously to support him and to assist him in doing that as best as I can in my little portion of the vineyard there down in southeastern Louisiana. And certainly, our city responds well. So we're doing our part for sure. 

CNS: What are some of the challenges that you've encountered in your archdiocese? What are some of the issues that you feel you need to shepherd the most? 

Archbishop Checchio: Well, I think, like a lot of people in our world today, there's not just my diocese, but I think all over the United States and probably most of the advanced world, people are really super involved with their phones and with their internet and kind of living this parallel life in a way, you know. And I think kind of calling people back into relations and communion is something that we always have to do.

Sometimes you see in restaurants, everybody's on their own phone at a table, you know, not talking. So, I mean, I think kind of one of the challenges I think for us is using social media for evangelization too. Because that's where a lot of people are, and so we're trying to make efforts at that. We started a new office, Office for Evangelization and Communications, so putting them together and trying to reach especially our youth in that way. 

CNS: Tell me a little bit more about that. What made you merge the two? 

Archbishop Checchio: Well, we're blessed in New Orleans, we're blessed with a large Catholic school system. We have 64 schools, 24 high schools. So we have a lot of our youth in our schools. So that's great. Sometimes, the youth, you don't see them at Mass all the time, you know? So, kind of trying to reach out to them and get to them, the ones that we don't see and have regularly, is a challenge.

We all have to evangelize. That's our mission, all of us. You know, it's in our DNA. It's what we're to do as Jesus' disciples, whether it's 2,000 years ago or now. And so, evangelization, using social communications and new means of evangelization that we can try to break into, especially for our youth, is a priority for us. So we started the new vicariate and we're hiring someone to kind of help him, the priest, in his role of doing that: being creative and reaching out.

CNS: And how did being here in Rome as rector (of the Pontifical North American College) help prepare you in some way, working with young men who were preparing for the priesthood? Was there anything you learned in your time here that's really serving you back home? 

Archbishop Checchio: It was a great experience and great preparation for being a diocesan bishop, obviously, working with the young men discerning a vocation because you obviously are deeply involved in their lives, their everyday lives, and their spiritual lives. So it gives you some insight into what priests are doing, too, in the same way. 

And keeping our friendship with Jesus a priority in our life is what we teach in the seminary, and making it a priority every day, and letting that feed you and your ministry so you're not just running around doing stuff, doing good pastoral work, but it's actually Jesus that you're sharing from your own friendship with Him, from your own relationship with Him. So, our priests are the same way. They can get busy and get active and overextended. So, it's the same task in a way as trying to shepherd or father, the priest is helping them to keep their identity clear, helping them to keep their mission clear, so they know that they're sharing what they should be sharing, which is Jesus, not doing things for people. 

CNS: Describe a little bit of what your archdiocese is like and how Pope Leo has been received. What kind of reaction are you seeing from the people there, not just Catholics?

Archbishop Checchio: Our archdiocese is beautiful. It's a historic diocese. Next year will be the 300th anniversary of the dedication of the first St. Louis Church, which became the Cathedral in our diocese when it was made a diocese. So it's 300 years of the faith there. 

Where I came from, New Jersey, it was a young diocese. It was one of the youngest dioceses in the country. So that was a big change for me, you know, learning about and appreciating the historicity of an old church for the United States. It was a diocese before the United States existed, and before Louisiana was part of the United States, because we didn't become part of the American church until the Louisiana Purchase. So, kind of learning that. 

But the faith was so intermixed between the different succession of people that were there: the Spanish, the French, the Cajuns. They all lived their faith very publicly. And so, so much of the history of Louisiana, the church is ingrained in it. So, they go hand in hand. And that's still the case these days. Even people who aren't Catholic will pray the Rosary, just because it's part of the culture down there. 

And we have a lot of young families. We do a "nine church walk" on Good Friday, packed with a lot of young families walking their kids and their strollers through the different churches. And they have a lot of great traditions down there, which are really very uplifting and so beautiful to find. 

I went to the archdiocese in kind of a difficult time for them, just as they were finishing up their bankruptcy. I didn't know anything about the archdiocese before I went there; it wasn't in my region. It wasn't something that I followed or tracked. But what I read in the newspaper was kind of scary, reading about what was going on down there. And when I showed up, it was just completely different. There's a lot of faith there. The people, they love the church, they love their families, they love traditions and they're very loyal people. So that's really resonated in my heart, those qualities, those things that I found. So it's been easy to kind of hit the road running there. 

We did the consecration of the Sacred Heart. We took it and made it a priority for the archdiocese. We had nine weeks of spiritual preparation for the consecration of prayer. And then we got images of the Sacred Heart, which we distributed to every household so they could do a home enthronement on the Sunday that we did the consecration in our churches. So people were able to do it that night in their homes and enthrone the Sacred Heart in their home. 

And now we're doing a nine-week program on pastoral outreach and evangelization (for) the fruits of the Sacred Heart. Pope Pius XII told us the fruits of the Sacred Heart are the Eucharist, the priesthood and the Blessed Mother. So, we're using those three things as themes for these nine weeks. 

And the end of it will be a "Welcome Home Sunday" in the middle of August, August 14th, where we'll ask everybody to invite one person to come to church with them who doesn't usually come with them. Whether it's inviting someone back who's fallen away or drifted away or someone that's been hurt or someone that's searching, whatever, but to invite one person. So that'll be the end and hopefully the culmination of our Sacred Heart consecration. So the people have responded so well and beautifully. 

New Orleans, too, has a beautiful seminary system. I was here at NAC, of course, and NAC's in my heart and always will be, but I'm so blessed to find a beautiful seminary at Notre Dame Seminary next door to where I live. We'll have 145 seminarians next year, so it's a really large seminary, maybe the largest in the country. And we have 100 in the college seminary across the lake, there at St. Joseph's in St. Benedict, Louisiana. So we're blessed with large, vibrant, happy, healthy, holy seminary communities. And that's been a real joy and it's a treasure for our archdiocese. 

CNS: What's something that both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have invited you to? What's something that resonated with the two of them that you feel you're trying to implement as being a pastor? 

Archbishop Checchio: Pope Francis named me a bishop and assigned me to Metuchen (New Jersey), and it was during the Year of Mercy. So I embraced that. I embraced his year of mercy and made it part of my ministry since then, too. 

Pope Leo, you know, his family lived in New Orleans for 200 years. So his fourth great-grandfather was the sexton for our cathedral, for St. Louis Cathedral. And his fourth great-grandmother, in a parallel line, died in childbirth, sadly. And she and the baby are buried, underneath the cathedral. So he has a lot of history there. 

His grandparents moved to Chicago, he told me, and that's why the family, and he grew up there. But he said that they would talk about New Orleans … a lot, and had a lot of friends and family there.

So New Orleans loves Pope Leo because of the connection, the 200 years that they were in the city. The grandparents lived right across the street from our cathedral, Jackson Square. So they really embraced him and feel like he's one of us. He's made a great impact on our archdiocese. 

CNS: Anything you would like to add about receiving the pallium today?

Archbishop Checchio: It was a beautiful day, of course, receiving the pallium from Pope Leo an American pope, made it extra special, I think. 

It was a bit surreal. As rector here at the North American College, I'd been to pallium services every year and hosted receptions here. For 12 or 13 years, I was at the pallium Mass. So I'd been to a lot of them over the years. But it was a little surreal, especially when you're going up the steps to go get the pallium. You know, it was very moving. The pallium is to yoke us, to bring us together with Peter and his shepherding of the church