Bishop Mario Dorsonville celebrated with Mass, buried at church in Thibodaux
Hundreds attended a Thibodaux cathedral to honor a bishop who exuded hope and served for nearly a year.
Bishop Mario Dorsonville, 63, was buried Feb, 1 at the St. Joseph Co-Cathedral in Thibodaux. He was appointed one year ago to the day and was installed on March 29. He spent 31 years in Colombia, 31 in Washington, D.C., and his final year in the Houma-Thibodaux area.
Dorsonville is remembered for his warm smile, his sense of humor, his faith and his passion for Colombian coffee. Michael Robichaux, 17, was Dorsonville's altar boy. When the bishop was working, Robichaux was his right-hand servant. He said even though Dorsonville was as high ranking as he was, he was very down to earth.
"I've never seen someone with so much joy in his heart," Robichaux said. "If you saw him, it felt like you were the only person in the room."
Robichaux was one of the last to leave the service. Before he left, two white roses were dropped on Dorsonville's casket. He is buried on the right side of the church. Another vault will be created next to it with daylilies surrounding them, said the Rev. Vincente DeLa Cruz. They were Dorsonville's favorite, he said.
During the Mass, every seat in the co-cathedral was filled. The air was perfumed with incense wafting from censers. The Members of the Knights of Columbus and Knights of Peter Claver surrounded the casket, shielding Dorsonville's body from view until the casket was shut. Once shut, it was draped with a cloth, and a crozier was placed in front.
The knights then lined shoulder-to-shoulder down the main aisle, drew their sabers and held them in front of their faces, blades up. About 100 priests, 20 bishops, two archbishops and two cardinals entered the co-cathedral and walked side-by-side to the sanctuary, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, organs and Latin singing.
Mass was held, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl told of Dorsonville's history. Dorsonville was chairman of U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Migration and Refugee Services Committee from 2019 to 2022. He was a member of the conference's committees on domestic justice, migration and refugees, and religious liberty and the Adhoc Committee Against Racism.
A native of Bogotá, Colombia, he was Houma-Thibodaux's fifth bishop. The Houma-Thibodaux's diocese includes 38 churches, 11 schools and an estimated 90,000 Catholics in Terrebonne, Lafourche and Morgan City.
He served as a priest and professor of business ethics from 1990 to 1991 at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. His first appointment within the Archdiocese of Washington was as parochial vicar of Our Lady of Lourdes Church Parish in Bethesda, Maryland, where he served from 1997 to 2004. He also served as parochial vicar of St. Mark the Evangelist Church Parish in Hyattsville, Maryland, from 2004 to 2005.
The Rev. Josh Rodrigue was the first person to pick Dorsonville up when he arrived in Louisiana Jan. 31, 2023. He said the first thing he noticed about Drosonville was his smile.
"I'm standing by the baggage claim, and he sees the white collar, and that big smile starts," Rodrigue recalled.
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Rodrigue stayed in touch with Dorsonville ever since. They'd speak on the phone, work together and occasionally joke about Dorsonville's fear of alligators. He said Dorsonville's greatest strength, and what he will always remember him for, was his hope. The hope was where the limitless well of happiness was drawn, he said, and hope will be Dorsonville's legacy.
"I think there's that hope that underlies his happiness," he said. "He was coming into a place that had hurricane damage and all that but… that hope causes us to be joyful."
This article originally appeared on The Courier: Bishop Mario Dorsonville celebrated funeral Mass buried in Thibodaux
