Date Published:
June 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Eudist Fathers

[This article was written in the 1930's and published in 1948; for the precise citation, see the end of the document.[

Eudist Fathers. The Congregation of Jesus and Mary, the members of which are commonly called "Eudist Fathers", was founded by St. John Eudes, at Caen, France, on March 25, 1643. It is a purely ecclesiastical body composed of priests and other ecclesiastics or aspirants to the priesthood. It also admits laymen, who in the capacity of coadjutor brothers render valuable assistance in temporal matters. The specific ends of the Congregation are the education and training of young men for the priesthood in major and minor seminaries, and the renewal of the Christian spirit among the faithful by the preaching of missions and retreats. These ends, however, do not exclude educational work in colleges, and missionary work among heretics and infidels, as well as other activities to which the Congregation may see fit to devote itself on the request or with the permission of the Holy See. The members of the Congregation do not wear any distinctive religious garb they adopt the clerical dress of the parochial clergy as determined by the bishops and councils of the different countries in which they live.

The Congregation came to Canada in 1890. It numbers in this country today approximately 150 members and 15 establishments. Among these institutions may be mentioned the grand seminary at Halifax (Holy Heart of Mary), St. Anne's College, Church Point, Nova Scotia, Sacred Heart College, West Bathurst, New Brunswick, and Sacred Heart Seminary (novitiate and scholasticate), Gros-Pin-Charlesbourg, Quebec. The provincial house and missionary residence is at Laval des Rapides, Quebec. The Eudist Fathers direct parishes in different Canadian dioceses, and have charge of the vast Victoriate-Apostolic of the gulf of St. Lawrence. See R. P. Émile Georges, La Congrégation de Jésus et Marie dite des Eudistes (Paris, 1933).

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 303.