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evident in the resolution which they presented to the Board of Aldermen and county officials asking businesses to close during his funeral. One statement from that resolution tells us much of this remarkable man: “May the bright and shining example of his gentle character, his charities, his consistent life as a priest and as a man be ever before us and be emulated by others.” That his funeral was the largest anyone in Bay St. Louis had ever seen at that time is proof that he was loved and respected by Catholics and non-Catholics. He is buried under the Calvary in St. Mary’s Cemetery.
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Into the Twentieth Century
As Father Aloise Van Waesberghe began his pastorate at Our Lady of the Gulf on July 1, 1903, his congregation was a growing one. In 1847, only three marriages were recorded: Henry Saucier to Victoria Toulme, D.W. Johnston to Henrietta Monet, and Francis Casanova to Adele Toulme. Records of 1902, the year previous to Father Waesberghe’s arrival, show twenty marriages and ninety-seven baptisms, not all of infants but some of older children and even on occasion of adults.
Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian were fast becoming favored vacation spots mainly for New Orleanians, many of whom were French Catholics. In the early 1900s as these vacationers arrived, the population of Bay St. Louis grew from its normal 1,200 to 10,000 in the summer months. The L&N Railroad then in operation brought entire families on its daily run from New Orleans. Men of these families often commuted to their places of business in the city while their families remained on the Coast. With the addition of these to his hard-working local congregation of merchants, professionals, truck farmers, laborers, fishermen and oystermen, Father Waesberghe had his work cut out for him.
Before coming to Our Lady of the Gulf, Father Aloise, born and ordained in Belgium, had done missionary work in Hancock and Harrison counties as well as in other parts of the state and had been pastor at Pass Christian from 1896 to 1903. Because his spiritual work deserved commendation, he was made an honorary canon and dean on the Mississippi Coast, an honor previously bestowed on Fathers LeDuc and Blanc. Father Aloise’s last assignment was a brief one. His untimely death in 1906 at fifty years of age ended his busy three years at Our Lady of the Gulf where he had overseen the schools begun by Father Buteux and where he had administered to the many missions in his territory including what would become the parishes of St. Clare and of St. Rose of Lima.
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