Background
He was born Francisco Ildefonso Mareno in the town of Sedella located in the Province of Málaga and, as a teenager, entered the Capuchin Order by which he was given the religious name of "Antonio".
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Antonio Sedella
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Commonly called Père Antoine, he has become a noted figure in the culture of the city. His ghost is said to walk an alley now named for him which runs alongside the city"s cathedral. A street and a restaurant in the city"s historic French Quarter are named for him.
Presumably a short time after his ordination as a priest, he arrived in New Orleans in 1774 as an official of the Spanish Inquisition after the transfer of the colony of Louisiana to Spain by France a decade earlier.
Named pastor of the Church of Saint Louis in the city, after gaining a reputation for rigidity in his early dealings with the people of New Orleans, he later became known to them for his dedication to the prisoners of the city, as well as to its large slave population. In his depiction of Friar Antonio in the novel Père Antoine (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1956), the writer Edward F. Murphy portrayed him as a rigid ideologue, who was responsible for the destruction of the city due to his refusal to allow the church bells to ring in warning, out of the religious prohibition of this on Good Friday, which was observed that year on the day the fire occurred.
After the sale of the colony to the United States in 1803, the Holy See appointed the Review Louis Dobourg, South.S., as the Apostolic Administrator of the diocese.
Friar Antonio continued as Rector of the cathedral until his death on 19 January 1829.
He was buried in the church three days later.
