Quebec's Good Father

When His Holiness Pope Pius XI dismembered the Canadian Archdiocese of Regina last year and gave 24,000 Roman Catholics their own diocese of Gravelbourg, he chose as first bishop a 46-year-old priest named Jean Marie Rodrigue Villeneuve. Last week the Pope elevated Bishop Villeneuve from Gravelbourg to Quebec--a prodigious leap in the hierarchy, for the Archbishop of Quebec (most venerable see in North America) is traditionally made a Cardinal. Untraditionally youthful, Archbishop Villeneuve is regarded as certain to get, at the next papal consistory, the red hat of Quebec's late Felix Raymond Marie Cardinal Rouleau.

Born in Montreal, son of a French Canadian cobbler, Quebec's new Archbishop was ordained in Ottawa. He became superior of St. Joseph Scholasticate, where he taught philosophy, canonical law, moral theology. Vastly erudite, he taught also at the University of Ottawa, became dean of its theological faculty in 1929. Ottawa knew him as its "Good Father," a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, founder of several houses of retreat, a tall, spare cleric who lends ascetic dignity to the affairs of his church.

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