Deaf Ministry

St. Agnes Parish’s ties to the Catholic deaf community in Baton Rouge go back a long way. Today the ASL interpreted Mass at 8 am on Sunday is attended by a relatively small number of deaf Catholics (and non-Catholics), among them, Hubert and Jeannette Meliet, Kenny Davis, and Christopher Alley. Ann Moore and Donna Davis rotate as interpreters for the Mass. Memories shared by these individuals form a picture of St. Agnes’s participation in the Catholic deaf ministry across the years.

Both Hubert and Jeannette attended the Louisiana School for the Deaf (LSD) from grades one to twelve when it was located down the street from St. Agnes at 504 Mayflower Street. Hubert remembers walking with other LSD students to the old St. Agnes Church (on East Blvd between South Blvd. and Myrtle Ave,) for Mass on Sunday, and to the new church beginning in 1951. In the 1950s–1960s, a Father Welsh came once a month from New Orleans to celebrate a signed Mass. Dominican sisters also came from New Orleans to teach the Catholic LSD students catechism on Sundays at St. Agnes. In the 1960s a teacher at the LSD donated a house on Mayflower across from the school to be the Catholic Deaf Center. A Father Smith served for twelve years at the Deaf Center, where he lived and celebrated the Mass in sign language. The Center held social events as well for the larger Catholic deaf community. In 1974, the Center moved to 2585 Brightside Lane in anticipation of the LSD’s gradual move to 2888 Brightside Lane in 1978. Named the St. Francis de Sales Catholic Center for the Deaf, it included a chapel. Sister Shirley, a Dominican, was the administrator, and other Dominicans continued to come from New Orleans to teach religion.

 The Center thrived throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It held potluck dinners regularly after its Saturday Vigil Mass, and some 150 elementary through high school Catholic students at the LSD were brought by bus to the Center for catechism class on weekday afternoons. The Center also had a relay service for all the deaf of Baton Rouge until the state took over that service sometime in the 1990s. Anne Moore’s parents, Lucien Moore and Shirley Babin, now deceased, had attended the LSD, and Ann grew up going with them to the Center for Mass and social events. Lucien helped found a local chapter of the International Catholic Deaf Association that organized missions with preaching, retreats, and travel to conventions. Ann became a professional ASL interpreter as an adult.

When the Dominican sisters from New Orleans left the Center, lay people taught catechism, including Hubert and Jeannette. Donna Davis began teaching catechism at the Center at age eighteen, and she has been continuously active in ministry to the Catholic deaf community in Baton Rouge ever since then. As a child, she had interacted with her parents’ deaf friends who signed, and as a teenager, she taught herself ASL from a book. Kenny Davis, a graduate of LSD and a Baptist, called the Center when he began attending LSU to find an interpreter for his classes. Donna became his interpreter, and in time, his wife. Kenny entered the Church a year before they married. 

 Due to a variety of reasons, including increasing restrictions by the state on teaching religion to the students at the LSD, attendance at the Center dropped over time, and in 2013, the Diocese closed the facility on Brightside because of funding. The St. Francis de Sales Catholic Center for the Deaf then became a ministry out of Christ the King Church at LSU, with Donna employed as the religious education coordinator. The next year the ministry moved to St. Agnes, with Father Gelisan, a deaf priest from Africa living in residence at the rectory, intending to take over the ministry from Donna, the sole remaining employee. Two students from the LSD were brought by their parents for catechism and were confirmed at St. Agnes. Donna worked to locate Catholic deaf in the Baton Rouge area, and Father Gelisan went to their homes to bless them, hear confessions, and pray the rosary. In less than a year, Father Gelisan made the decision to return to Africa, and the Diocese closed its deaf ministry. St. Agnes continues a deaf ministry through the Sunday signed Mass. Donna, a parishioner of St. Agnes, has volunteered in an unofficial capacity to teach, interpret, and visit homebound deaf, especially during the Covid shutdowns. Father Vincent Dufresne (now in Paulina) had been the last chaplain at the Center on Brightside, and he ministers the sacrament of penance to the deaf.

Christopher Alley is a relative newcomer to St. Agnes. He moved to Baton Rouge from Boston in 2018 when he married his wife, whose parents live here. Christopher, Jeannette, Hubert, and Kenny agree that, as with society in general, the growth of technology—especially video phones, texting, and closed captioning—and the Covid shutdowns have caused isolation among the deaf community. They look forward to using the cafeteria again to gather deaf Catholics there in person for social and formation purposes.