Physicking Priestess

Keen was the lamentation, sonorous the drumming which last August howled from the strange Church of the Innocent Blood in a swampy outskirt of New Orleans. Mother Catherine Seal, mulatto foundress of a faith-healing Afro-Catholic cult, was dead in far-away Lexington, Ky.

Some nine years ago she remonstrated with her third husband for his philandering. He kicked her in the stomach. The kick caused a partial paralysis. She went to a faith-healer for relief. He was "not treating colored folks that day." The injured woman dropped to her knees and shrilled her prayers directly to God. If He would cure her, she would have faith to cure others, and she would cure them black or white. By & by she recovered, ministered to others, amassed "voluntary donations," built a "manger" in the swamps, swore never to leave the place.

The establishment grew large. She surrounded it with a high board fence. Chief denizens were "saints," all female. Lesser in her hierarchy were "prophets" and "apostles." They bred fowl; dug for themselves a "Sea of Gethsemane"; prayed to a vast, crudely carved Jesus, who was black because the Scriptures did not say that he was not black. Awesome was the Deity, a towering figure the color of roast potatoes, made of clay and burlap.

Thousands of devotees, black and white, went to Mother Catherine for "cures." Her apostles searched them at the wooden gate for weapons. The unarmed entered, had a pinch of salt dropped in a palm, which they lapped up and made a wish for Mother Catherine's help. "Saints" lined up the applicants. The file approached the altar where stood stout Mother Catherine, adorned by a white headdress and a starched apron with the word MOTHER embroidered in red across its bib. On a side table was a huge brown bottle of warm castor oil, which she had blessed, and a bowl of quartered lemons, "taste-killers." To each one with the "miseries," a saint gave a full tumbler of the tepid oil and a "taste-killer." Away each would prance, blubbering oil and lemon juice, shouting "bress sweet Jesus." Occasionally Mother Catherine conducted "Epsom Salts Sundays."

Last August she herself had the "miseries." An evil spirit, she told her devotees, was haunting her. "Lord Jehoviah done told me to go to my old home in Kentucky and fight that spirit."

Heavily she left her "manger," took a Jim-Crow railroad car to Lexington, Ky. There within a few hours she died "of complications."

In the Church of the Innocent Blood "saints," "apostles" and "prophets" wailed, rubbed their drums, kissed the gaudy wounds of their Christ, fondled the feet of their Deity, groveled at their "Sea of Gethsemane," prayed with the soft-rubbed words of Louisiana Negroes for the fulfillment of their "vision": that Mother Catherine was coming back to them. Mother Catherine did not come back, and the tomb prepared for her in the temple lay unused, the health authorities refusing permission for her to lie there.

Mother Catherine's mantle descended upon Mother Rita, whose career was last week checked by the public administrator. Although they owed neither debts nor taxes, the followers of Mother Catherine lost their temple. She forgot to make a will and left no heirs. The public administrator had to do his duty and order a public auction, the proceeds going to the State treasury after deducting official fees. Mother Rita declared that if the building were sold, the entire city of New Orleans would be destroyed by flood "so quickly that no one would have time to speak."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.