In rural Lafayette Parish, in one of the most Catholic regions of the country, a little village called Vatican sits on La. 93 between Scott and Cankton.
Some of Vatican’s principal streets are Vatican Road, Pope Drive and Bishop Street. It’s about 5 miles away from St. Peter Roman Catholic Church in Carencro, but there’s only one church in Vatican itself — Vatican Baptist Church.
And while Pope Leo has Creole roots that stretch back to Opelousas, there’s no evidence that the first American pope has any connection to this Louisiana outpost of the Holy See.
A new book by Cajun historian and folklorist Barry Ancelet shines a light on this conundrum of a place. “Vatican,” a short memoir written in Cajun French verse, is a collection of stories from Ancelet’s childhood at the home of his aunt and uncle, who were subsistence farmers in Vatican. The stories, which take place through the 1950s and 1960s, preserve the original language and sounds of their telling.
“Vatican” is a short memoir written in Cajun French verse depicting author Barry J. Ancelet’s childhood at his aunt and uncle’s farm in Vatican, La, in the 1950s and 60s.
Courtesy Barry Ancelet
“I spent a lot of time on this farm where my father’s sister and her husband and his parents all lived together, and of those people, only my aunt spoke a little English,” said Ancelet.
“So I started jotting down these memories, and they came in French, because that’s the language of the world I was in. I wanted to capture the musicality of the way they spoke.”
“Vatican” depicts the world of Ancelet’s aunt and uncle — Saul Benoit and Lena Ancelet Benoit, who was known by her lifelong nickname, “Petite.” Lena was a tall woman at 5 feet, 11 inches, but Cajuns love carrying childhood nicknames like “Tee-Jean” (or “Little John,”) through adulthood. It’s a linguistic expression of a quirky sense of humor that denotes family and familiarity.
Actually, it’s thought that the community of Vatican got its name thanks to that Cajun talent for fun and nonsense. Yes, it is a reference to Vatican City, but according to Ancelet the joke started around the time St. Peter Catholic Church was being constructed in Carencro in the early 20th century.
Area residents thought it would be apropos, and hilarious, to call their community “Vatican,” and the name stuck when people started listing it on maps.
“Cankton got named for a joke, too,” said Ancelet. “Dr. Guidry, who delivered me, was the doctor around there forever. His nickname was ‘Cank’ because he could call ducks without a duck call, using just his voice. Someone made the joke, it was ‘La Ville de Cank.'”
After growing up in the Lafayette and Vatican area, Ancelet went on to study Cajun French culture and language as an academic discipline, bringing together the threads of language, music, storytelling and place to explain a part of the world that had primarily been studied and written about by outsiders.
Ancelet founded the Cajun and Creole music festival Festivals Acadiens et Créoles in 1974, and is now a retired Professor Emeritus of Francophone Studies in the modern languages department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
A sign advertising okra and figs near Vatican, La, on W. Gloria Switch Road in Carencro.
In visiting memories from his childhood and writing “Vatican,” Ancelet said that he wanted to preserve the world he grew up in for his grandchildren. Today, Vatican is a crossroad carrying people from the city of Lafayette to the more rural backroads of Acadiana, where old homesteads still mark the places where generations made a living from the land.
“It was a little world where my aunt could stand on the front porch and see all of the stories of the neighbors playing out. They grew everything they ate. They saw very little money in a year, but I never ate so well in my life,” said Ancelet.
“Vatican doesn’t have the grocery store anymore. It doesn’t have the two places to play cards, and the saloon. But it still has an identity. People from Vatican still feel like they’re from Vatican.”
“Vatican” can be purchased online through Centenary College’s Louisiana French press, Les Éditions Tintamarre. Ancelet will hold a reading and book launch at Cavalier House Books in Lafayette on Friday, Aug. 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., moderated by Cajun French linguist Amanda LaFleur, who wrote the book’s introduction.