French Ursulines arrived in New Orleans in 1727 and established the oldest school for girls currently operating in what is now the United States. During a period of crisis after a large group of nuns left New Orleans for Cuba in 1803, Mother St. Andre Madier, one of the seven nuns who remained, appealed to her cousin, an Ursuline in France whom the reign of terror had forced to leave her monastery at Pont-Saint-Espirt. She was Mother St. Michel Gensoul, a remarkable woman of great talent and interior piety, who, during the exile in Montpellier, opened a boarding school for girls there. Fearing for the flourishing school, Bishop Fournier refused to request her leave, saying that only the Pope, then a prisoner of Napoleon, could give such a permission. One day while praying before a statue of the Blessed Mother, she was inspired to say, "O most holy Virgin Mary, if you obtain a prompt and favorable answer to my letter, I promise to have you honored in New Orleans under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor."

Since the end of December 1810, when Mother St. Michel, her companions and the statue arrived in New Orleans, devotion to Our Lady of Prompt Succor has grown in New Orleans and Louisiana, and has spread through the United States and even beyond. In the late 19th century, Pope Leo XIII granted the solemn crowning of the statue, an honor carried out splendidly by Archbishop Janssens on November 10, 1895. In 1912 this devotion was officially approved by Rome.

From conversations, letters, contributions, requests for Masses of thanksgiving and similar sources, generations of Ursulines and friends of Our Lady of Prompt Succor have learned about many of the favors granted through the intercession of Our Lady in response to pleas for quick and favorable help. We will never know them all. But those we know are a source of encouragement and hope to all who count on Our Lady's help.

Among them, two interventions of Our Lady in particular come from early New Orleans as important to the city and its people. The first has to do with one of the great fires which periodically threatened the city, the Ursuline Convent included. On Good Friday in 1788, frightened residents joined the sisters in the convent chapel, begging Our Lady to save them and their homes from the raging wind and flames.

Within minutes, the wind turned back on itself, and in a short time, the fire had lost its momentum and burned out, leaving the convent unharmed, while nearly 800 buildings in the City were destroyed.

The second well-known intervention of Our Lady of Prompt Succor concerns the Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. General Andrew Jackson arrived to defend New Orleans on January 23, 1814. He urged the residents and the Sisters to evacuate for fear that the recent burning and pillaging of Washington D.C. by the British Army would also take place in New Orleans, a key port of entry to the mighty Mississippi River. When the Sisters refused to leave, citing the needs of those whom they served, the General asked them to pray, at which time they began all-night vigils of prayer. During the night of January 7, Andrew Jackson and his relatively small, little-prepared and ill-equipped band of soldiers organized their defenses against the large, very well equipped British Army which would attack the city before dawn. At the same time, many citizens not directly involved in the army joined the Ursuline Sisters in their all-night vigil in their chapel on Chartres Street, imploring Our Lady of Prompt Succor to give the victory to Jackson for the United States, saving the city of New Orleans from British control. During the night, the Ursuline Superior, Mother Ste. Marie Olivier de Vezin, promised Our Lady that if Jackson and his men were victorious, a Mass of thanksgiving would be sung every year in memory of her saving help to the city on that day. As dawn was breaking, Bishop DuBourg began a Mass for the same intention. At the very moment of Communion a courier rushed into the chapel announcing that Jackson and his men had won the battle, and the chapel rang out with the joyous singing of the Te Deum. Following the battle, General Jackson wrote a letter to Bishop DuBourg calling for a gathering of all citizens to give thanks for “the great assistance we have received from the Ruler of all events.”