This month marks the 50th anniversary of the day a prominent cardinal archbishop resigned, at the peak of his career, and left his diocese to spend the rest of his life working in a leprosy clinic in Africa.
Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger, who made the dramatic announcement in November 1967, was Archbishop of Montreal. He had been appointed to lead that diocese by Pius XII in 1950 and created a cardinal three years later.
In the 1950s, Quebec was triumphally Catholic. As Archbishop of Montreal, Cardinal Léger was a public figure, treated with respect and even awe. He made a weekly broadcast reciting the rosary, with a million listeners tuning in. He was a popular public speaker and his photograph appeared so regularly in the press that he was nicknamed “Kid Kodak”. He exemplified a confident Catholicism with an unchallenged place in official life and public consciousness.
At some point, at the height of all of this, he seems to have had profound doubts. Not about his faith, which never wavered, or about his mission as a priest or the role of the Church, but about exactly how he should fulfil his calling, and how the Church should serve the spiritual needs of humanity.
Léger took part in the Second Vatican Council and supported the direction in which it was leading the Church. But meanwhile things were changing in Quebec. A culture that acknowledged Catholic traditions at every level was giving way to a questioning that resonated through television and pop culture, accompanied by new prosperity and increasing social mobility. How should a priest, a bishop, teach and guard the faith in these changing times?
Léger seems to have become profoundly depressed, echoing perhaps an earlier experience when he wanted to become a Jesuit but was considered to be emotionally unsuitable. At that time, he found a spiritual home in the Saint-Sulpice order, and his priestly career flourished. He worked in Japan, and taught in France, Italy and Canada. He was regarded as a rising star and an unsurprising choice as Archbishop of Montreal, the largest Catholic archdiocese in the British Commonwealth.
When he decided to step down after 17 years in the post, he discovered a fresh flourishing. In Africa, he worked in leprosy hospitals, living close to the patients in poor conditions. His work among children handicapped by this disease made him a noted figure. Over the years he would receive many honours, including the Order of Canada and the National Order of Quebec.
Those who tended to promote the idea of a “pre-conciliar” and a “post-conciliar” Church with different teachings and doctrines failed to understand him. Léger remained always true to what he saw as unchanging truths and simply wanted to serve in a different way at a pastoral level. He was a passionate defender of religious freedom and of truth as something that imposes itself and should not be regarded as a matter of government edict.
He retained the doctrinal certainties that, as far as he was concerned, were rooted not in the pontificate of Pius XII but in eternity.
Léger never saw his work in Africa as a rejection of the Church or in any way a departure from its structures. As a cardinal-elector he took part in the conclaves that elected John Paul I and then John Paul II in 1978. Attempts to enlist his name in support of liberal Catholic campaigns failed. He was not, as some commentators tried to suggest, an opponent of Humanae Vitae and, in fact, specifically supported its fresh emphasis on the importance of love and unity in marriage. His style was progressive in a more authentic sense than could be understood or assessed by campaigners who saw the Church through political rather than theological lenses.
Quebec would turn its back on its Catholic identity from the 1960s onwards and Léger seems to have had a profound sense that, while the old style would no longer work in this situation, he was not the man to offer the new approach that was needed.
His African ministry took him among the world’s poorest people, in situations radically different from anything in a prosperous province of Canada. Across Africa, from the 1960s onwards, the Church would grow rapidly in numbers and influence, in marked contrast to the Church in Western countries. Léger’s decision revealed anew what the Church has often discovered: that in achieving apparent popularity and official status, the Church becomes vulnerable in new ways to people’s cynicism, disillusionment or simply boredom. And at a personal level, Léger discovered the kind of “call within a call” that Mother Teresa also heard. Like her, he answered it faithfully, despite the worldly costs.
Joanna Bogle is an author, broadcaster and journalist
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