Clarion Herald
Just a few blocks from Notre Dame Seminary, a core group of about a dozen Eastern-rite Catholics in communion with Rome worship every Sunday in a chapel adorned with icons of Jesus, Mary and the saints.
For the last 22 years of its 45-year existence, St. Nicholas of Myra Byzantine Catholic Mission Church at 2435 South Carrollton Ave. – located in a former savings and loan building that has been beautifully adorned with iconography and stained glass – has been a sacred space filled with the bells and incense that most Latin-rite Catholics would associate mainly with Christmas or Easter liturgies.
Each Sunday at 10 a.m., St. Nicholas celebrates the Eastern rite’s Divine Liturgy – the term for Mass. Father Nile Gross, associate academic dean at Notre Dame Seminary, has faculties to celebrate the liturgy, assisted by Deacon Gregory Haddad of the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, who was ordained in 1996 and has been the administrator of the Byzantine mission for the