J. Douglas Deshotel
John Douglas Deshotel was born on January 6, 1952, in Basile, Louisiana, the third of eight children of Welfoot Paul Deshotel and Luna Marie Manuel - Cajun country, in the heart of what is now his diocese. He entered Immaculata Minor Seminary in Lafayette, then went to Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, Texas, for a bachelor's degree in philosophy and the University of Dallas for a Master of Divinity. On May 13, 1978, he was ordained a priest - for Dallas, but in his hometown church of St. Augustine in Basile, by Bishop Maurice Schexnayder of Lafayette. He would serve Texas for thirty-eight years before coming home.
In Dallas he was a pastor and diocesan hand, and on April 27, 2010, he was ordained an auxiliary bishop of Dallas by Bishop Kevin Farrell. He speaks English, French and Spanish - the three tongues of his native Acadiana as well as of his Texas flock.
On February 17, 2016, Pope Francis named him the seventh Bishop of Lafayette, and he was installed on April 15, 2016, at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. His episcopate has been marked by the abuse crisis's long Louisiana shadow - the diocese's 2019 release of thirty-three credibly accused clergy, and new lawsuits under the state's look-back law - and, on the liturgy, by a deliberate, announced intention to change nothing.
- 2021-07Deshotel decided that celebrations of the Extraordinary Form in the diocese may continue as currently scheduled - reported by CNA (July 2021, via the diocese's Mater Dolorosa Latin Mass Community) and preserved in fuller form by the Traditionis Custodes tracker: 'it is my decision that celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass in Latin may continue as they are currently scheduled.' ↗
- 2026-07-05St. Martin de Tours, St. Martinville, still publishes its Sunday Traditional Latin Mass newsletter, and marked Fr. Vidrine's 20th ordination anniversary with a Solemn High Mass on July 8, 2026 - the 2021 interim decision still the diocese's operative policy five years on; Our Sunday Visitor's intervening survey records Vidrine: the bishop wants to 'maintain what we do' with 'no intention to change it unless mandated to do so.' ↗
Deshotel answered Traditionis Custodes the way Lafayette's Cajun faithful would have wished: by deciding, in July 2021, that the Extraordinary Form in his diocese would simply continue. CNA's survey carried the report of the diocese's Mater Dolorosa Latin Mass community - the bishop had said that 'in the interim,' celebrations of the Latin Mass may continue as currently scheduled - and the Traditionis Custodes tracker preserves the fuller form of his words: 'it is my decision that celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass in Latin may continue as they are currently scheduled.' That is a dated act of his own, and it is why his posture reads preserved and not no_record.
The 'interim' has now lasted more than five years and shows every sign of being his settled policy. Our Sunday Visitor's later survey of the Latin Mass's American state found his pastor at St. Martin de Tours in St. Martinville, Fr. Jason Vidrine, reporting that the bishop wants to 'maintain what we do,' with 'no intention to change it unless mandated to do so' - and St. Martin's, drawing some three hundred on a Sunday, still publishes its Sunday Traditional Latin Mass newsletter in 2026, with a second Sunday Mass at Plaisance drawing some two hundred. Two thriving country parishes, kept by a bishop who said he would keep them. It is preservation without trumpets, and it is preservation all the same.