During a Vatican meeting last July, Francis told Lacroix that Quebec must rise again. In Lacroix, he is now appointing a cardinal with lengthy missionary experience in South America whose pastoral approach to ministry is in keeping with the type of leadership preferred by Francis.
Lacroix was among 19 new cardinals the Pope named Jan. 12 and the only North American who will receive a red hat at a Feb. 22 consistory in Rome.
At a news conference from Quebec City Jan. 13, held in French and English, Lacroix said he had no prior knowledge of his appointment and found out only when the Pope announced the names during his Sunday Angelus in St. Peter’s Square.
“It was a complete shock, to tell you the truth,” he said, though he said he knew it could happen some day since Quebec is Canada’s primatial see.
Lacroix, who replaced Cardinal Marc Ouellet as Quebec’s archbishop and primate of Canada in early 2011, is, at 56, the second youngest of the 16 voting-age cardinals under 80 the Pope chose. With Lacroix, Canada now has three resident cardinals, joining Cardinals Thomas Collins in Toronto and the retired Jean- Claude Turcotte in Montreal. Ouellet serves as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, one of the top positions in the Vatican.
The cardinal-designate said he accepted the Pope’s choice as a “great sign of the closeness of the Pope and the Universal Church” as Quebec marks the 350th anniversary of the founding of the first parish in North America.
“My nomination is for the whole diocese,” he said, pledging that his first priority will be serving Quebec City’s 200 parishes and one million Catholics.
Quebec is undergoing a social and religious earthquake that is being seen in family breakdown, individualism and a lack of respect for life, Lacroix said, noting the province “with so many resources is on the verge of legalizing euthanasia.” Church attendance has plummeted and the government is pressing forward with a secularization charter intended to neutralize religion in the public square. The Pope knows Quebec and knows she is in need of encouragement, Lacroix said.
Lacroix spent nine years doing missionary work in Colombia after his ordination. Asked how he resembles or differs from Pope Francis, Lacroix said: “He has a lot more experience. He is a Jesuit; he’s a scholar. I am not a scholar.”
But his nine years as a missionary in South America and similar work in Quebec, preaching retreats, has given him plenty of pastoral experience.
“We have that in common. We like to work with people,” he said. “Both of us are in love with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What the Church needs the most is not first of all changing structures, but changing us, more witnesses of Jesus Christ.”
Journalists asked Lacroix about his rapid ascension from his episcopal ordination in 2009, his ascension to archbishop within two years and then being chosen a cardinal three years later. He responded by saying he now has many, many years to serve the Church as a cardinal, in selecting new popes and in advising the current pontiff.
Asked why he was not as provocative as Ouellet, who was pilloried in the media for his public stands on Catholic moral teaching, Lacroix said the Pope is very provocative in what he says.
“I am in that line,” he said, pointing out it is the Gospel that provokes, that changes hearts.
“I think that when the heart is changed, when it is changed by God, then one can talk about the moral questions. That’s how I work,” he said.
Lacroix said the Pope is creating an opening in peoples’ hearts to hear the Gospel, and perhaps rediscover the faith they had left or never had. Pope Francis “is a man who is faithful to the doctrine of our Church,” he said.
“Do not ever expect the Church to be for euthanasia or abortion,” he said. “But he doesn’t start by harping on that. He starts by inviting people to open their hearts, to feel they are loved, that they have a special place in this Church and they can grow and walk and be on a path of renewal.”
Lacroix faced the hot button issue of Quebec’s controversial Charter of Quebec Values, now before the Quebec National Assembly, which would require all public sector employees to remove any overt religious garb or insignia. Lacroix called it divisive.
“We are not on the right course with this Charter,” he said, noting it is creating suspicion among people. Instead of bringing people together and celebrating Quebec’s richness, it’s causing people to “build walls” and be afraid of each other.
Born in 1957 in the small village of Saint-Hilaire de Dorset, in Quebec’s Beauce Region, Lacroix spent his teen years in Manchester, New Hampshire, an industrial city about an hour north of Boston, where his family had moved to seek employment. He returned to Quebec as he reached adulthood where he studied for the priesthood. He obtained a master’s degree in pastoral theology at Laval University before being ordained in 1988.
He will join 18 others who will receive the red hat, including six men from Latin America. The consistory will bring the total number of cardinals to 218 and the number of cardinals under age 80 to 122. Until they reach their 80th birthdays, cardinals are eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.