The West should be a cardinal point

Pope Francis will lead a consistory to put in new cardinals on Aug. 27. The 16 new cardinal electors, eligible to vote within the subsequent election of a pope, come from shocking locations, and plenty of are concerned with individuals on society’s margins. As observers notice, the lads this Pope has named princes of the Church usually haven’t any pretensions to royalty. They’re God’s servants within the winery of life.

Among the new appointees hail from locations which of us like me have by no means heard of or are on the fringes of our consciousness– Ekwulobia, Nigeria; Wa, Ghana; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, amongst them. Such appointments converse of the universality of the Church and of vibrant religion in distant locations. I applaud Pope Francis’ want to unfold the crimson hats far and huge.

Nonetheless, one ecclesial backwater has by no means had one in all its personal named to the Faculty of Cardinals. That will be Western Canada. Cardinal George Flahiff was archbishop of Winnipeg when he turned a cardinal in 1969. However even Cardinal Flahiff was born and raised in Ontario.

A few others had been bishops within the west earlier than they had been moved to Toronto — James McGuigan, archbishop of Regina from 1930 to 1934, and Cardinal Thomas Collins, bishop of St. Paul, Alta., and archbishop of Edmonton in more moderen occasions. Cardinal Marc Ouellet additionally spent a few years as rector of Edmonton’s St. Joseph Seminary.

Aside from that, nobody. Not one single born and bred westerner has ever turn into a cardinal.

A lot the identical may very well be stated for the Atlantic provinces. Just one Maritimer, Cardinal McGuigan from Prince Edward Island, acquired the crimson hat, and no head of a diocese in Atlantic Canada acquired that honour. In actual fact, 13 of the 18 Canadian cardinals in historical past had been born in Quebec, two in Ontario and two exterior the nation. (4 archbishops of Toronto have turn into cardinals, however Cardinal Collins was the one one born in Ontario.)

Certainly, no cardinals have had any reference to the north, a area served by a few of our most heroic bishops.

The Church of the west continues to be a younger Church, based barely 200 years in the past when missionaries got here to convey the religion to Indigenous individuals and later served the settlers. At this time, individuals have come from everywhere in the world to make their properties within the Canadian west and north. Ours is a racially combined and various Church through which traditionally the laity have performed a big function.

The Church in Alberta is receiving media consideration this week with Pope Francis visiting Edmonton and close by areas to apologize for the Church’s function and the behaviour of a few of its members within the Indian residential faculties. The Church got here to this area with the angle of a colonizer, disrespecting the unique inhabitants of the land and righteously making an attempt to destroy their tradition.

But the regional Church itself stays one thing of a colony. A lot of our bishops are transplants from the east simply as Canada’s governors-general had been emissaries from the UK till the Fifties. My diocese, the Archdiocese of Edmonton, traces its historical past to 1871 when it was established because the Diocese of St. Albert. In these 151 years, we’ve had eight ordinaries, not one in all whom was born in Western Canada.

Within the Diocese of Calgary’s 110 years, solely two of the eight ordinaries have been Prairie boys, together with the homegrown Bishop Paul O’Byrne who served for 30 years following the Second Vatican Council.

A bishop with native roots is apt to really feel extra comfy with the native Catholic tradition and the individuals of the area. Lots of the outsider bishops have achieved nicely in adapting — the bishop is apparently to be married to his individuals. However simply as marriages of {couples} from totally different cultures face distinctive challenges, so can also the wedding of hierarchically-oriented clerics and a devoted with extra democratic inclinations.

I didn’t count on to see a Western Canadian appointed a cardinal this yr. Canada presently has 4 cardinal electors, greater than its Catholic inhabitants warrants by its share of the variety of Catholics across the globe.

However the day will come when Canada’s flip arrives once more. When that day comes, the Pope and his advisors might do worse than look to the hinterlands of our nice dominion to search out somebody burnished by the summer season Prairie solar and the chilling winter winds to talk for the Church of this area.

(Glen Argan writes his on-line column Epiphany at https://glenargan.substack.com.)