The Diocese of Lafayette stretches from the city south to Vermilion Bay,
whose waters lead to the Gulf of Mexico. Down among the bayous and
sugar cane fields of southern Louisiana, Catholicism runs deep.
Many of the 300,000 Catholics who live here trace their history back to the late 1700s, when their French ancestors fled Canada to escape British rule. In this humid, undeveloped land, they discovered waters filled with shrimp, oysters and crawfish, and they built churches on patches of dry ground.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/catholic-church/betrayed-by-silence/ch1/
Many of the 300,000 Catholics who live here trace their history back to the late 1700s, when their French ancestors fled Canada to escape British rule. In this humid, undeveloped land, they discovered waters filled with shrimp, oysters and crawfish, and they built churches on patches of dry ground.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/catholic-church/betrayed-by-silence/ch1/