“I think this is the turning point in the history of our church,” Cardinal Marc Ouellet told a June 21 news conference, describing the ordination as “one of the highest points of the week.”
He noted that 12 other men who were ordained in 2008 or who will be ordained later this year, were also invited to come forward.
Thousands packed the Pepsi Coliseum for the ordination, greeting the new priests with a roar of applause and cheers and standing ovations, and not a few tears.
Following the ordination, Fr. Francis Gadoury, one of the new priests, said he hoped the young people gathered at the Congress would hear a “resonance in their heart for the joy of the priesthood.”
“Thank you, Lord,” Gadoury said. He also thanked the clergy, the Congress Organizers, and his own religious community Famille Marie-Jeunesse. He gave special thanks to the late Pope John Paul II for the life-changing experiences he provided young people at World Youth Days. He mentioned specifically the 2002 Toronto World Youth Day.
His voice breaking, he thanked his parents. “Today the Church thanks you for the sacrifice which you make joyfully.”
“It is truly a grace to be able to celebrate the link between the Eucharist and the priesthood,” Ouellet said, in his welcoming remarks at the coliseum. He noted the men were witnesses of their experience of the gift of God in the Eucharist in their parishes and religious communities.
In his homily, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, the papal legate or pope’s representative at the Congress, told the 12 candidates that during the laying on of hands “something profound will happen that will mark you as a priest for eternity.”
An invisible change will take place like that in the Eucharist, he said.
Like Ouellet, Tomko stressed the relationship between the priesthood and the Eucharist by quoting Pope John Paul II who said: “There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist.”
The bread changes to the Body of Christ; the wine to his blood, he said. In celebrating the Eucharist, we produce this change through the power of Jesus Christ Himself and the Holy Spirit, he said. The priest as “alter Christus” assures the continuity of Christ’s gift of himself through the centuries so generations can experience this memorial of His perpetual sacrifice, he said.
Tomko said the priesthood is not an ordinary job that can be put down from time to time. “We are priests always,” he said.
Most of the candidates had their parents help them don their new vestments, or bring them their paten and chalice. The warm embraces on the raised platform surrounding the altar brought many in the vast audience to tears as they stood, applauding.
“It is beautiful to see the response of the people of God to their new priests,” Cardinal Ouellet said, asking those present to pray new vocations to the priesthood and to religious life.”
We have a need for new vocations, which are a gift of God, he said.
Eight of the new priests come from Famille Marie-Jeunesse, a relatively new community of young men and women and priests based in Sherbrooke, Quebec. One comes from the Monastery of the Coeur of Jesus, an even newer community based in Chicoutimi, Quebec founded in 1996.
Two new priests were from the Quebec diocese; one came from the Dominican order.
The new priests are Gilles Fortin from the Quebec seminary; Michel Grenier from the Dominican order; Michel Labbé from the Quebec seminary; and Jean-Stéphane Boutin, from the Monastery of the Heart of Jesus.
The eight from Famille Marie-Jeunesse are: Alain Bouchard, 29; Donald Cloutier, 31; Nicolas Favart, 36, originally from Belgium; Francis Gadoury, 28; Michel Guimont, 47; Dominic Perron, 32; Karl Perron, 30; and Louis Riverin, 33.
Famille Marie-Jeunesse provided choral and instrumental music for the ordination, including many of their own arrangements. The community focuses on the evangelization of young people through a Marian spirituality.
At the news conference, Ouellet praised Famille Marie-Jeunesse for its “extraordinary impact” in the evangelization of youth, calling them “another sign of hope.”
For more coverage by the Catholic Register on the 49th International Eucharistic Congress see:
You’ll know they are pilgrims by their backpacks
Your TV eye on the Eucharistic Congress
Why is it always a United Church?
Where are young priests? Right here