Marc Ouellet

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Styles of Marc Cardinal Ouellet


Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Quebec

Marc Cardinal Ouellet, PSS (born 8 June 1944 in La Motte, Quebec, Canada) is a Canadian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the present Archbishop of Quebec, and thus Primate of Canada. He was elevated to a cardinal on 21 October 2003.

He was born in 1944 in La Motte, a small village near the city of Amos in northern Quebec. Ouellet attended the Teacher Training College, earning a baccalaureate in education, before obtaining a license in theology from the Grand Séminaire of Montréal. On 25 May 1968, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Gaston Hains of Amos. Ouellet spent most of his priestly career as a professor and rector in seminaries. He also received a license in philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) (1976), and a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University (1983).

Ouellet was named titular archbishop of Acropolis and Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on 3 March 2001. Pope John Paul II personally consecrated him as an archbishop, with Angelo Cardinal Sodano and Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re as co-consecrators, on 19 March of the same year in St. Peter's Basilica. On 15 November 2002 he became Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada (installed on 26 January 2003), and has been one of the most staunch defenders of the Catholic faith in the Canadian hierarchy. He has suggested that changes around the Quiet Revolution in Quebec in the 1960s went too far. He was created Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria in Traspontina by John Paul II in the consistory of 21 October 2003.

Ouellet is associated with Communio, a journal of theology established by moderate-to-conservative Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, and with Hans Urs von Balthasar, a renowned twentieth century Swiss theologian. Ouellet has supported a return to Eucharistic adoration and the Gregorian chant.

Ouellet is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German. He is known for his missionary work in South America.

He was a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave, and numerous observers believed that Ouellet was papabile himself. A report from the National Catholic Reporter, anticipating the 2005 papal election, placed Ouellet among twenty papal possibilities ."[P]eople who have worked with Ouellet," said the report, "describe him as friendly, humble and flexible, and a man not so captive to his own intellectual system as to make him incapable of listening to others." A report said that Ouellet had supported Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ouellet remains eligible to vote in any future papal conclaves that begin before his 80th birthday on June 8, 2024.

A Eucharistic Congress will take place in 2008 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Quebec City.

[edit] Public apology

In a letter published in Quebec French-language newspapers on November 21, 2007, Cardinal Ouellet publicly apologized for what he described as past "errors" of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. Among the errors he wrote about were attitudes, prior to 1960, which promoted "anti-Semitism, racism, indifference to First Nations and discrimination against women and homosexuals."^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] Cardinal Ouellet said his letter was written in response to the public reaction to the statement he submitted to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, and that it was inspired by a similar letter issued in 2000 by Pope John Paul II.^[5]