In an interview with La Presse last week, Quebec City Archbishop Gerald Lacroix reported on his recent conversation with Pope Francis in which the Pope recalled the great missionaries of Quebec and stressed that the traditional faith in Quebec must ‘rise again’.
Quebec led the way in establishing the Christian faith and morals in North America with the first Christian missionaries to North America known as the Canadian Martyrs. However, Quebec also led the way to loss of faith and traditional morality with the 1960s silent revolution and the legalization of abortion and homosexuality. Abortion first took place in Quebec with the then-illegal actions of abortionist Henry Morgentaler and was later legalized by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who also hailed from Quebec.
“Ahhh, Quebec! Land of missions, a land that has known many great missionaries!” said the Pope when Archbishop Lacroix introduced himself as the Quebec Archbishop. When Lacroix indicated that Quebec wanted to continue with the missionaries, the Pope replied, repeating twice, “Quebec must rise again.”
Archbishop Lacroix interpreted the Holy Father to be saying, “He hopes that we Quebeckers rediscover the faith that gave us life and built our country.” He added, “We have to rediscover the roots of our faith, we must rise again as Christians and rediscover the Gospel in our lives.”
In recent years, Quebec, formerly referred to as a “priest-ridden province,” has undergone in-depth reforms to separate church from state. Mass attendance has gone from 90 percent before 1960 to around 6 percent, according to a 2008 poll, although at least three-quarters of Quebec's population of 8 million still describes itself as Catholic.
Georges Buscemi, the head of the Quebec pro-life group Campagne Quebec Vie told LifeSiteNews.com that while he hopes for a turn around in Quebec, it is likely things will get worse before they get better. The leaders, he said are ‘so proud’ – referring to the recent approval of euthanasia and the legislature’s unanimous motion praising abortionist Henry Morgentaler as a ‘great Quebecer’ at his death.
Buscemi suggested that beyond Divine intervention it would take a calamity of Biblical proportions to bring Quebec back to God and morality, at least in the short term.
Nonetheless, one of Buscemi’s predecessors, Gilles Grondin, who founded the Quebec pro-life group in 1989 did believe a turnaround for Canada and indeed North America would come from Quebec. Grondin, who died in 2004, was fond of suggesting that from the place where the rot began, the turn-around would also begin, since the blood of the martyrs who willingly laid down their lives for the faith would not be fruitless. Grondin however did not rule out catastrophic precursors to the turnaround.