Confession, Cajun Style

SAINT MARTINVILLE, La. (ChurchMilitant.com) – A religious order in Louisiana is both figuratively and literally going the extra mile to share Christ’s good news.

The Community of Jesus Crucified in St. Martinville is going out to the streets and other public spaces to meet people’s spiritual needs. Extending God’s forgiveness far beyond the confessional, they travel around the state to evangelize in refurbished ambulances and U-Haul trucks that serve as mobile confessionals.

The group’s religious superior, Fr. Michael Champagne, believes strongly in going directly to the people to hear confessions, particularly after the pandemic lockdowns. He tells Church Militant: 

Especially post COVID, we have many Catholics who have not been to Mass or confession in some time. They may feel very inhibited to search for confession times and perhaps embarrassed to fumble into the back of a Catholic Church. By showing up in their lives with the mobile confessional and with young happy religious and lay volunteers to visit with them about the Faith, actual grace works, and people come to confession and change their lives that would not have done so otherwise.

Mobile confessional

Mobile confessionals can be spotted easily. The retrofitted ambulances are labeled “Spiritual Care Units” and pictures of the Divine Mercy are displayed prominently on the sides. Sisters and laymen can be seen directing cars or pedestrians to the units.

Father Champagne said his team is especially busy this Advent season preparing for Christmastime. This week, he said, the CJC drove to a health club in Lafayette and, for two hours, heard about 25 confessions.

They’re also scheduled to visit a parish function outside Lafayette and take the retrofitted U-Haul to a local nursing home. They have their sites set on a couple of busy parking lots this week, too, so that more people can enter the Christmas season with a clear conscience and aligned with the Church. 

The priest estimates that since his project started in 2015, the mobile confessionals have racked up over 30,000 miles, stopping in over 500 locations and spending 2,000 hours hearing roughly 14,000 confessions. “The farthest we have traveled is to Narragansett, Rhode Island, for the July foot race, where we heard about 50 confessions on the street,” he added regarding occasional out-of-state ministry.

The CJC crew has collected tons of anecdotes they call “glory stories.” One story they relate is of a woman walking into a PetSmart store when one of the laymen helping with the mobile confessional invited her to confession. The shopper lamented that it had been 30 years since she last received the sacrament. Yet she stood in the long line, reciting the Divine Mercy as she prepared to confess and receive forgiveness. According to the CJC, she came out of the confessional exclaiming, “No handcuffs!” referring to her new-found spiritual freedom.

The idea of going directly to the people to evangelize traces back to Champagne’s work in hospital ministry as a young priest. “Among the types of ambulances that would frequent the hospital was a critical care transport,” he explained. “I thought it would be helpful to have an old ambulance converted into a Spiritual Care Unit that could go out to where people are and provide evangelization and possibly confessions on the street.”

His idea materialized in 2015 when he acquired an old ambulance on eBay and retrofitted it into a mobile confessional. Since then, the group has repurposed two more old ambulances donated by a local ambulance provider and a U-Haul trailer. 

Father Champagne also traces CJC’s method of operation to Jesus Christ Himself and His way of spreading the gospel. He tells Church Militant:

Saint John Paul once said that ever since the Incarnation of the Son of God, religion is no longer man’s blind search for God, but rather God going out seeking man. To live this incarnational spirituality, we need to meet people where they are. Jesus met the blind beggar along the way. Jesus met His first disciples along the shore of the Sea of Galilee while they were cleaning their nets. He met the Samaritan woman while she was at the well to get water. The Church continues the work of Jesus and must do the same. 

Church Militant has reported on another of CJC’s evangelization projects. Each summer on the Feast of the Assumption, it conducts a spectacular annual Eucharistic boat procession down the Bayou Teche — a river flowing down south-central Louisiana. The priests traveling aboard the spiritual armada stop at various points along the 40-mile journey to hear Confessions and visit with the people.

The CJC is also committed to disseminating knowledge of the spiritual life by conducting retreats, offering classes and workshops and promoting and participating in Eucharistic adoration. 

The community consists of married and single lay members who live in their own homes, as well as priests, brothers and sisters who live communally. It was founded in 1986 by the now-deceased Fr. Jerome Frey in the diocese of Lafayette and is classified by the Church as a private association.

According to the CJC, its members “live out the dying dispositions of Jesus as missionaries in their secular environments by being with the oppressed, consoling the sorrowing, strengthening and encouraging the weak and revealing the victory of the Cross to all God’s people.”

Father Champagne said in 2016, “We have become too comfortable in a sedentary type of church atmosphere. … the Church exists to evangelize.”