Catholic Churches in Louisiana: 764 Congregations Mapped by County and City

Louisiana holds 764 Catholic parishes in the Churches List directory, 10 percent of the state's 7,372 churches and the densest Catholic presence in the South. The tradition spreads across 250 Louisiana cities and towns, 16 of its buildings carry National Register listings, and 427 parishes publish websites, a 56 percent rate that leads every large denomination-state block in this series.

New Orleans leads with 66 Catholic listings. Baton Rouge and Lafayette hold 22 each, with the Acadiana towns — New Iberia (20), Thibodaux (13), Houma (13) — forming the tradition's distinctive second tier.

Which Louisiana cities have the most Catholic churches?

Louisiana is the only Southern state where the Catholic map IS the settlement map: the parishes (the state's word for counties is no accident) of the Mississippi and the bayou country were organized around their churches under French and Spanish rule, before the United States arrived. The Acadiana cluster around Lafayette descends from the Acadian expulsion of the 1750s; New Iberia's 20 parishes serve a region where Catholic identity and Cajun identity are the same fact.

A selection of Catholic congregations across Louisiana

The table holds 60 of the 764 Catholic congregations listed in Louisiana, selected for record completeness. The Catholic tradition page and the Louisiana state page hold the complete lists.

Where Catholic congregations stand in Louisiana: the map

How Catholic's Louisiana footprint compares nationally

Against the national 25,275, Louisiana's 764 is mid-sized — but as a share of its state it has no Southern peer: 10.4 percent Catholic, against low single digits everywhere else in the old Confederacy. The line between Catholic south Louisiana and Baptist north Louisiana remains one of the sharpest religious borders in America, visible in this directory's county counts and in the register list, where the French colonial churches cluster entirely below it.

How this map was assembled

Counts come from the Churches List directory snapshot of June 11, 2026: 764 congregations in Louisiana carry the Catholic tradition label, out of 25,275 nationwide and 7,372 Louisiana churches of all traditions. Tradition labels derive from each congregation's source records and self-description; 427 of the Louisiana listings carry a website. The directory does not rank congregations. Corrections are applied through the corrections page.

Related reading in The Letter: the Louisiana Catholic corridor follows the river parishes in detail, Louisiana's 57 register-listed churches documents the buildings, and New York's 2,264 parishes shows the tradition's northern pole. The Catholic tradition page lists all 25,275 parishes nationwide.