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N O L A.C O M
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S u n d ay, S e p t e m b e r 28, 2025
James Checchio, named next archbishop of New Orleans, brings broad experience to lead the archdiocese into its next era
‘I HAVE GREAT TRUST IN GOD’
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LETHAL HEAT LOUISIANA’S QUIET DISASTER
More trees could help New Orleans combat heat island effect Lack of a robust canopy and climate change keep temperatures climbing
Second in a series
BY SAM KARLIN | Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By CHRIS GRANGER
The Most Rev. James F. Checchio, left, thanks Archbishop of New Orleans Gregory Aymond during Checchio’s introduction as the next archbishop on Wednesday.
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BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL | Staff writer
he bishop from New Jersey began his first day in New Orleans — the day he would be introduced as the city’s archbishop in waiting — with an early morning stroll to church. Just a few blocks from the Archdiocese of New Orleans headquarters on Walmsley Avenue, the Rev. Patrick Carr was holding his 7 a.m. Wednesday Mass at St. Rita Catholic Church. The Most Rev. James Checchio, who had arrived in the city only the day before from Metuchen, New Jersey, poked his head in. “I was so pleased to see so many people,” said Checchio. “Different ages and diverse backgrounds, people dressed in suits going to work, young people.”
It was Checchio’s first stop during a whirlwind visit to his new home. By the end of the day, he had been introduced to New Orleans as the newly named coadjutor archbishop in a ceremony at Notre Dame Seminary. He had toured St. Catherine of Siena in Metairie and posed for a picture with hundreds of smiling schoolchildren. He had walked the halls of St. Augustine High School. He met with a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, held a prayer service for area priests, and then, at day’s end, stopped into Ye Olde College Inn for dinner. Those who know Checchio, 59, the New Jersey native named by Pope Leo XIV to succeed Archbishop Gregory Aymond when he retires in the coming months, say that kind of hands-on, highenergy approach is what New Orleans’ Roman Catholics can expect from their new leader.
The Most Rev. James F. Checchio meets students at St. Catherine of Siena in Metairie during his introduction as the ä See CHECCHIO, page 4A next archbishop of New Orleans on Wednesday.
WEATHER HIGH 91 LOW 74 PAGE 8B
The volunteers fanned out across New Orleans while the sun beat down and the temperature kept rising. Sensors attached to their cars captured the stifling heat on a July afternoon, transmitting data back to the group’s home base in Hollygrove-Dixon. There, Raymond Sweet served as a lieutenant of sorts. He fielded calls every few minutes as drivers asked where to go next. His table was strewn with printouts of routes, and he flipped between a barrage of incoming texts and a sheet of names. The temperature had reached 98 degrees. A wet bulb thermometer rested on a tripod out back, measuring how humidity was making the heat worse. It clocked 83.5 degrees — dangerously high and becoming unsafe for people to spend time outside. The brutally hot day was perfect for their experiment. Sweet and his team hoped their results would help capture how extreme heat bakes the city
ä See TREES, page 5A
Restoration of dignity
Hundreds of Native American remains pulled from La. graves still not returned to tribes BY HALEY MILLER | Staff writer In 1968, a Louisiana prison guard unearthed over 100 skeletons and sacred objects at a grave site in West Feliciana Parish, exposing them to the light for the first time in centuries. He kept the items, precious pieces of handmade Tunica pottery and traded European goods. Those could be sold. He tossed the remains into the Mississippi River. Out of 1.5 tons of recovered materials from the grave robbing, “the human remains could fit into a shoebox,” said Earl Barbry Jr., the historic preservation officer for the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. “The guy that desecrated the graves really
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 2F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
ä See DIGNITY, page 10A
13TH yEAR, NO. 47