Father Johnson mourns the loss of his ‘friend’ Bishop Cheri

Father Josh Johnson, pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, called Bishop Ferdinand Cheri OFM of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who died March 21, a good shepherd and a “good friend.”

“(Bishop Cheri) and I worked on a number of projects together to foster discipleship among college students and inner city high school youth and young adults,” Father Johnson said. “I am grateful to our Lord that I was able to spend time learning from Bishop Cheri and working alongside him to form a new generation of saints.”

Bishop Cheri, 71, served most recently as administrator of St. Peter Claver Parish in New Orleans until kidney and heart problems forced him to step away from active ministry. He was born with one kidney and had been on dialysis three days a week for several months.

“He has been called home to the Lord,” Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans said in a message to priests, religious, and laity of the archdiocese. “We mourn his death and thank God for his life and ministry.”

The archbishop said Bishop Cheri started his vocational journey in the archdiocese “as a seminarian, as a priest, and as a pastor” and had directed a “very dedicated ministry.”

“And then, he heard God’s call to join the Franciscans and was a valued member of the Franciscan community,” Archbishop Aymond said. “We were delighted to receive him back into the Archdiocese of New Orleans as auxiliary bishop in 2015, and I have enjoyed working with him in sharing episcopal ministry and shepherding God’s people.”

Bishop Cheri was hospitalized after attending the national Lyke Conference for Black Catholics last June, and he began dialysis several months later and was dealing with a serious heart condition.

“We saw him not only as a vocal advocate for African American Catholics and advocating for our needs but also as a shepherd to the world,” said Dr. Ansel Augustine, director of the archdiocesan Office of Black Catholic Ministries. “When you think of bishops being shepherds, you see someone who cares about people, one on one. When you talked to him, you felt like you were the only person in the world that mattered even though he might have had 8 million other things going on. But Bishop Cheri’s charism — and maybe it’s the Franciscan thing of hospitality — was something you felt with him. I think that’s why so many people loved him.”

Bishop Cheri, who was ordained to the episcopacy on March 23, 2015, at St. Louis Cathedral, was one of seven active African American bishops in the U.S.

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Bishop Cheri led a peaceful march of 250 from the archdiocesan chancery building to Notre Dame Seminary. The prayer service was called “Requiem for the Black Children of God.”

“Enough is enough,” he said from the steps of the seminary, where he did his theological studies. “This scene drains our spirits and clouds the union of the human family.”

In a 2018 address honoring New Orleans’ tricentennial, Bishop Cheri traced the history of the Black Catholic Church in New Orleans and praised the Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in 1842 by Venerable Henriette Delille, a free woman of color; the Knights and Ladies of St. Peter Claver; the Office of Black Catholic Ministries; and the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, founded in 1980 to explore Scripture and church teachings from both “a righteous Black consciousness and an authentic Catholic tradition.”

“These individuals and moments challenged the Catholic community of the Archdiocese of New Orleans to not only change the narrative of the church but (also) to affirm that we share common journeys together,” Bishop Cheri said. “We were called to rise above the Code Noir and Jim Crow laws of our times that supported the politics of fear and anger and the foundation of racism in the South.”

A lifelong singer, he loved to break into song during a homily or whenever the mood struck.

In a 2015 interview before his ordination, Bishop Cheri spoke about how he reveled in the gift of music and his vocation.

“The experience of becoming a bishop — and how people are reacting to it — I feel like I sang a solo that became the community’s prayer,” he told the Clarion Herald newspaper in New Orleans.

Bishop Cheri was appointed the 11th auxiliary bishop of New Orleans on Jan. 12, 2015. Until he received the phone call from the papal nuncio, the self-effacing Franciscan priest was directing campus ministry at Quincy University, a 1,300-student school run by the Franciscans in rural Illinois, about 135 miles northwest of St. Louis.

Bishop Cheri’s life story was one of amazing grace.

His father, Fernand Joseph Cheri Jr., was an Army veteran whose full-time job was delivering mail. He worked extra jobs to keep the children fed and in Catholic school uniforms.

That experience, as mysterious as it was, was an important signpost of what it meant to grow up both black and Catholic in New Orleans. As a member of Epiphany — which was staffed by Josephite priests — Bishop Cheri grew up in a protective cocoon where there was a sense of “really strong community.”

Even after his family began attending St. Leo the Great Church, Bishop Cheri continued attending Epiphany School, and he began thinking about the priesthood.

He chose to attend St. John Prep, then a school for young men considering the priesthood. He played fullback on the Chargers’ football team and sang in the glee club. While there, he met two other religious women — Marianite Sister Judy Gomila and Sister of the Holy Family Marie Bernadette — who worked in the Ninth Ward with the needy in St. Philip the Apostle Parish, which encompassed the Desire Housing Development.

When Bishop Cheri went on to St. Joseph Seminary College in St. Benedict, there were about 15 Black seminarians studying for dioceses across Louisiana.

There were difficult challenges. Sometimes it was an insensitive, racially charged remark by a professor that left him wondering if he truly would be able to persevere in his vocation. But every time something traumatic occurred, Bishop  Cheri said, someone came into his life to help reassure him and save his vocation.

Many of those “father figures” were members of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, whom he had met during summer conferences. They became sounding boards whenever things got rough. He mentioned Father Thomas Glasgow, a New Orleans priest.

By the time he got to Notre Dame Seminary to begin his theology studies, Bishop Cheri felt compelled to learn everything he could about ministering to all people. He took a mission trip to Jamaica, and his role was to help run a catechetical program at an orphanage.

He was ordained to the diaconate in January 1978 at Epiphany Church and then was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Philip Hannan on May 20, 1978, at St. Louis Cathedral.