Saint Roch Chapel

Saint Roch Cemetery, established by Rev. P.L. Thevis as part of a promise to have his parish spared of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. The chapel at Saint Roch Cemetery, also known as the Campo Santo (Holy Country) is the site of Good Friday worship that is well known throughout the city. The cemetery is the resting place of many prominent New Orleanians.  In 1867, the a minister in New Orleans prayed to Saint Roch, the patron saint of good health, to save his community from the yellow fever ravaging the town. Miraculously, no one in Reverend Peter Thevis' community was affected. Residents took this as a sign that Thevis saved his flock, and in his honor they erected this chapel. After many years the chapel has started to get pretty strange, as people have come from all around the world to bring their prosthetic body parts to the altar in hopes of being blessed.  When they're healed, they've left their prosthetic limbs, and the building is now filled with polio braces, glass eyes, dental plates and other parts of their prosthetic selves. St. Roch Cemetery occupies two city blocks in the New Orleans neighborhood known as "Bywater" which is between Elysian Fields Avenue, Florida Avenue, the Industrial Canal and the River. The cemetery is divided into two sections, the original St. Roch Cemetery and the section known as the Campo Santo or Holy Field. The Campo Santo is the burial site of many of New Orleans' old Italian and Sicilian families, including ancestors of the DeMajo family.