Paul-Eugene Roy

Monseigneur Paul-Eugene Roy (November 8th, 1859 - February 20th, 1926) was a Canadian man of the church which was bishop of Quebec of 1925 with 1926.

A long time auxiliary then coadjutor of the Cardinal Bégin, it was born with Berthier-in-Low, county of Montmagny, on November 9th, 1859. The first ancestor of the family, come from Dieppe to Normandy to the Canadian country towards 1663, Nicolas Roy or LeRoy, had been established close to the sault Montmorency, then, on the other side of the river, with Wood-Chatel and Berthier. Of wire father, for two hundred years, one had cultivated the ground by serving God and by observing his laws.

The father of Monseigneur, Benjamin Roy, and his/her mother, Desange Gosselin, were of these brave men " habitants" , as it had some so much in French Canada, modest, honest and good Christians, whose union was particularly blessed sky, since they less raised a family of step than twenty children, of which a nun and five priests: Mgr Paul-Eugene Roy, the priest Philéas Roy, of River-of-Wolf, Mgr Camille Roy, vice-chancellor of the Laval University, the Father Arsene Roy, about the Dominican ones, and the priest Alexandre Roy, of Saint-Henri-with-Lauzon.

In 1881, at 22 years, Paul-Eugene finished in Quebec his traditional Cours, with the small seminar, and it entered immediately with the great seminar. Its successes in class had been brilliant and, like one often says, it promised much. Also, since 1882, the superiors of the seminar of Quebec sent it to follow the courses of letters to Paris, the catholic Institute and the Sorbonne. It returned from there, at the end of three years, with its parchment of bachelor be-letters. With the catholic Institute, in the old historical church of the Carmelite friars, the detail is worth to be noted, the Canadian abbot had been, during two years, being used it as mass of Mgr Gasparri, later cardinal Secretary of State of Benoît XV and Pie XI.

Returned in 1885 in Quebec, with the seminar of his youth, the Roy abbot was ordered there priest on June 13rd, 1886 and it lived five years there. He professed rhetoric and was prefect of the studies to the small seminar. In 1890, it left Quebec and was going itself from there to exert the saint ministry in New England, where it was cleaned nine years, with Holy-Anne de Hartford, in Connecticut. In 1899, Mgr Bégin, become archbishop of Quebec for one year, had recalled it in its diocese and charged it preaching and with searching for the work of the Hôtel-Dieu, whose financial position was seriously compromised at this time.

In 1901, the Roy abbot was named priest-founder of the parish of Notre-Dame of Jacques-Cartier, divided that of Saint-Roch of Quebec. In 1907, on the call of the archbishop, it separated from its parish to deal with work incipient from the catholic Social action. April 8th, 1908, at 48 years, he was elected by Pie X bishop of Eleuthéropolis and auxiliary of Quebec. Its election was precisely greeted by unanimous acclamations of joy.

The next May 10th, it received hands of its archbishop, Mgr Bégin, in the basilica of Quebec, the oiling which makes the pontiffs in the Church of God. The life of Mgr Roy, which had been up to that point so active, continued to be it as much, if it were not it more. In 1909, it took share with the plenary council of Quebec. In 1910, it organized and directed to Quebec a congress of temperance which had much glare. The same year, one saw it holding an important place with the congress eucharistic of Montreal.

Two years after, in 1912, it governed Quebec large the Congrès of the French language in Canada. They was the big events there. But, there were others of them, obviously, where spread its initiative, its talents and its extraordinary activity. One enjoyed to repeat that Mgr Bégin had had the happy hand in the choice of its auxiliary. Venerated the archbishop showed itself of it very satisfied. Become cardinal in May 1914, Mgr Bégin required and obtained that its dear auxiliary pass to the rank of archbishop. Mgr Roy was indeed named archbishop of Séleucie on September 8th of the same year 1914. Six years later, on June 1st, 1920, it became in more coadjutor of the cardinal with future succession.

But alas! an evil relentless, the Cancer of intestine, was going too early to nail the dedicated coadjutor on a bed of pain, on April 17th, 1923, Mgr Roy entered to the hospital to leave moreover it. It is in its sick room that it collected, on July 18th, 1925, the succession of Mgr Bégin and that, the next on January 10th, it accepted pallium of the archbishops, the hands of Mgr Langlois, auxiliary of Quebec. It is there also that he died, one month after, on February 20th, 1926, at 65 years of age, 39 of priesthood, 17 of episcopate and 7 months of reign as archbishop of Quebec. Built in colossus, with six feet of face, firmly muscular and of energetic figure, a little proud head, the broad face, the clear and penetrating eye, the expressive aspect with possible, Mgr Roy breathed the force, uprightness and dignity. It was energy and the will in flesh and bone!

It was obviously marked sky for the exercise of the authority. Endowed with most beautiful qualities of the spirit and the heart, cultivated in a higher way, naturally eloquent and persuasive as it is not much, having occupied the highest stations with a rare dignity, large in a word in all the manners, this bishop distinguished, distant perhaps and authoritative by temperament, but gracious and good by virtue, had been on the head office of Quebec, if it were assembled there with its robust health of formerly, worthy in all points of its famous predecessors, the Bégin, the Taschereau, the Plessis, the Briand and the Laval.

The shortly after died of Mgr Roy, Mgr Alfred Langlois, bishop of Valleyfield, then become capitulary vicar and administrator of Quebec, in a letter with the clergy, wrote these lines, which summarize its beautiful admirably and fertilizes career: " During seventeen years, under the top management of our regretted cardinal-archbishop, like auxilaire then as coadjutor, Mgr Roy gave the measurement of its higher gifts, by devoting them to the organized labor and social action, press, temperance, morali-sation, early works catholics, with a zeal, an energy and a power of word which we will never forget.

Completed works by this distinguished prelate are registered in gold letters in the history of the Church of Quebec, and they will remain, for the entire Canadian clergy, an immortal honor and an example. But, which still exceeds its merits and its glory, it is the moral strength and the tireless resignation with which the famous missing saw himself little by little weakening in the middle of the cruelest sufferings and offered to God the supreme sacrifice. It was, certainly, admirable all its life in its words and its works.

It was it more on its bed of hospital, because the heroically supported pain adds to the noblest gifts of the heart an aureole which supplements them and a majesty which crowns them… " Nothing is tragic any more and more beautiful, indeed, from the supernatural point of view, than was to it the death of Mgr Roy, which could be shown so really higher than the most painful sufferings. It is corroded alive by an evil atrocious and laid down on a bed of pains that he became archbishop and accepted the pallium which symbolizes the force of Pierre the chief of the apostles. What imports! He was there so generous and so valiant that one is founded to believe that mysterious Providence will have made him preach, for the example, better and perhaps than one could not do it by the highest word, and more méritoire of the Christian and sacerdotal virtues.

A few days before dying, on February 7th, 1926, Mgr Roy signed its hand, with the address of its priests, the spiritual will that here: " My quite dear collaborators, - Of my bed of death, here the councils that God inspires to me to leave you and that I would like to write with the last drops of my blood: lo a burning zeal for all works of the propagation of the faith, especially for that of our company of the foreign missions and our Saint-François-Xavier seminar. - 2o an tireless and really supernatural devotion to all our works of catholic Social action, in particular to those of the press, temperance and the catholic working unions. - Please accept, with my more affectionate blessing, the wishes which I form so that is carried out more and more among you my supreme and permanent currency in the Sacred Heart of Jesus: Adveniat regnurn tuum! ..."

Sources

AUCLAIR, Elie. Canadian Figures , Montreal, 1933.

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