AddieStan

St. Jude as he stands in the New Orleans Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Congo Square On Rampart Street, just west of New Orleans's historic and sacred Congo Square , sits a sweet little Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe , the image of the Blessed Mother Mary said to have appeared to a Mexican Indian on Tepeyac hill, just northwest of what is now Mexico City, in 1531. She is often referred to as the patroness of the Americas. When Africans were brought as slaves to Louisiana in the early 1700s, they found it necessary to syncretize their native faith traditions with those of their European captors; it was the only way to keep their own traditions alive. This gumbo of West African and Roman Catholic practices gave birth to voudoun -- what we now call voodoo -- as well as the Brazilian tradition of candomblé , and the Latin American Santeria rituals. As an icon, Our Lady of Guadalupe has a distinctly Mexican Indian appearance, right down to the anatomi...