Our Lady of Prompt Succor Church

The name carries weight before you set foot inside. Our Lady of Prompt Succor is the patroness of Louisiana, invoked before the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. On the eve of that battle, New Orleans residents joined Ursuline sisters at their French Quarter convent to pray through the night before a wooden statue of the Virgin. The Very Rev. Louis William DuBourg offered Mass the next morning at the altar where the statue had been placed. At the moment of communion, a courier ran in: the British had been defeated. The Prioress made a vow to have a Mass of Thanksgiving sung annually. They've kept it every January 8th since. The devotion runs deep in Louisiana. During hurricane season, prayers are said at every Mass in New Orleans during the Prayers of the Faithful, requesting Our Lady of Prompt Succor's intercession and protection. Pious believers pray before her statue whenever a hurricane threatens the city. In 1907, a church bearing that name was founded in Westwego to serve the fishing and canning families of the West Bank. Westwego's Cajun population had migrated from Acadiana for the fishing industry, and the parish reflects those French-Acadian Catholic roots. Generations of shrimping and oystering families have worshipped here. The church remains active in the heart of Westwego's historic commercial district — a spiritual anchor for the West Bank, carrying a title earned two centuries ago when the city needed prompt succor and received it.