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Visiting Missionaries
For many years history was silent about the names of the missionaries who visited this section. We know, however, that missionaries from Mobile and New Orleans visited the coast occasionally during the years that followed. In 1820, the Bay was attended by a young priest named Michael Portier, who was destined to become the first Bishop of Mobile. After him came the Lazarist Fathers, Borgna, De Angelis and Aquatoni, and the seculars, Gallagher, Gury and Martin.
Pope Gregory XVI established the Diocese of Natchez on July 28, 1937, and Rev. John Mary Joseph Chanche, a Sulpician, who had refused the miter at Baltimore, Boston and New York, accepted the appointment as Bishop of Natchez, Bishop Chanche realized that Bay St. Louis needed a resident pastor, and to this office he appointed Rev. Louis Stanislaus Mary Buteux. In the diary of Father Buteux we read: “Saturday, July 31,1847, the feast of St. Ignatius; Bishop Chanche told me at Natchez that he confides to me Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Pearl River, Jordan and Wolf River, as far as 20 to 25 miles to the north.”