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A Cajun Priest and the Acadian Solution to Soft Priests in a Soft Church, by Kevin Wells – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

A Cajun Priest and the Acadian Solution to Soft Priests in a Soft Church, by Kevin Wells

ChatGPT and The Return of God: AI As An Unexpected Apologist, by Scott Ventureyra

September 3, 2025

Saint of the Day for September 4: St. Rose of Viterbo

September 4, 2025

Cajun-born Fr. Michael Champagne, the Religious Superior of the Community of Jesus Crucified. Kevin Wells.

By Kevin Wells, Crisis Magazine, Sept. 3, 2025

Kevin Wells’s latest book, Coached By the Curé: Lessons in Shepherding with St. John Vianney was just released by Scepter. His memoir, The Hermit: The Priest Who Saved a Soul, a Marriage, and a Family was released by Ignatius Press last autumn. For more information on his books, writing, and speaking, visit kevinwells.org.

Fr. Michael Champagne grew up sweating it out alongside French-speaking tough Cajuns who memorialized their Acadian forebears through the grind of raw Catholic lives.

A blast is heard from up the Bayou Teche, from the direction of Leonville, Cecilia, or Breaux Bridge. Then comes the ring of a far-off bell, barely heard through the cattails and wall of cicadas, crickets, and katydids. The tolling rolls down the waterway clear and rhythmic, like the echo of an evening train passing through a rural town.

It is August 15, and the Fête-Dieu du Teche has begun again. And just like the crushing weight of the Louisiana sun, countless Cajuns up and down the Teche will find themselves overcome. Hearts are about to break.

For many whose homes cling to banks of the bayou—rock-ribbed Louisiana Baptists, staunch anti-papists, nonbelievers, and the long-ago fallen away—the bell echoes in the backcountry like a rooster’s crow announcing the dawn of something forgotten or pushed away. Long-closed doors to the trace of a memory begin to open and set in motion first steps back to their centuries-old Nova Scotian roots. …

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