At least 50,000 Quebecers are expected to gather Saturday for something most rarely do: attend a religious service.
But the Mass at the Olympic Stadium to celebrate the elevation of Brother André, a school porter and faith healer who died 73 years ago, to sainthood is one of many contradictions surrounding religion, and Roman Catholicism in particular, in Quebec.
By most measures, the province is the most secular in Canada. Only 15 percent of Catholics regularly attend church and Quebecers have long rejected the church’s teachings on birth control, marriage and homosexuality….
“In Quebec, people are not specifically anti-Catholicism, but they are anti-clericalism,” said Gilles Routhier, a professor of theology at Laval University in Quebec City. “Brother André doesn’t particularly represent the church’s power. He was a simple, illiterate, modest person. People recognize themselves in Brother André.”
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In Canada A Saint, and an Inquiry Into the Sins of His Brothers
At least 50,000 Quebecers are expected to gather Saturday for something most rarely do: attend a religious service.
But the Mass at the Olympic Stadium to celebrate the elevation of Brother André, a school porter and faith healer who died 73 years ago, to sainthood is one of many contradictions surrounding religion, and Roman Catholicism in particular, in Quebec.
By most measures, the province is the most secular in Canada. Only 15 percent of Catholics regularly attend church and Quebecers have long rejected the church’s teachings on birth control, marriage and homosexuality….
“In Quebec, people are not specifically anti-Catholicism, but they are anti-clericalism,” said Gilles Routhier, a professor of theology at Laval University in Quebec City. “Brother André doesn’t particularly represent the church’s power. He was a simple, illiterate, modest person. People recognize themselves in Brother André.”
Read it all.