During his long time in ministry, Archbishop Plourde served as member of the Second Vatican Council and played a key role in the restructuring of the Canadian Catholic Conference, the name for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops before 1977.
Among the many highlights of his ministry, Archbishop Plourde chaired the committee that established Development and Peace in 1966-67.
Elected to the body that has since become the CCCB’s Permanent Council in 1966, Plourde was then in 1967 elected to an ad hoc committee that produced recommendations on the conference’s role in light Vatican II’s teachings.
As the conference’s vice president in October 1969, he went to Rome as the Canadian episcopal consultant and media spokesman for the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishop on “Co-operation between the Holy See and the Episcopal Conferences.”
Archbishop Plourde was president of the conference from 1969 to 1971
Born in New Brunswick’s Madawaska County in 1915, the eighth of 11 children, Archbishop Plourde was ordained to the priesthood in 1944. He had pursued a university degree in Moncton, and entered Holy Heart Seminary in Halifax before his ordination. Afterwards he did graduate studies in social sciences at the Institute Catholique de Paris and at the University of Ottawa where he earned a Licentiate in Social Studies.
In New Brunswick he served as a pastor, social worker and teacher in various parishes and institutions before becoming a bishop.
Pope Paul VI named him auxiliary bishop of Alexandria in 1964 where he served briefly as apostolic administrator until 1967, when he was elected the eighth bishop and seventh archbishop of Ottawa. He resigned as Ottawa archbishop in 1989 for health reasons about six months before the mandatory retirement age of 75. He continued in active ministry after retirement as an author and speaker at retreats and conferences.
Archbishop Plourde was vice president and founding member of the Ontario Conference of Catholic Bishops, now the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario.
“All the good that I have the duty to begin, it is with you that I will do it,” Archbishop Plourde told his new diocesan community during his installation homiliy as Ottawa archbishop on Feb. 22, 1967. “You will come with complete trust to inform your bishop about your needs, your successes or your failures. And I will use every occasion to consult with you, to encourage you, to help you. You will give that all to me without asking whether I merit it but simply because I have need of it in order to be the instrument of Christ, and in order to serve you.”
Archbishop Terrence Prendergast was to preside at his funeral on Jan. 11 at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica. Immediately afterwards, Archbishop Plourde’s remains will be entombed in the Archbishop’s chapel at the cathedral.