Ignace Bourget - Bishop of Montreal, and Church Expansion

Bishop of Montreal, and Church Expansion

On April 19, 1840, Jean-Jacques Lartigue died, and by right of succession on April 23, 1840 Ignace Bourget became Bishop of Montreal, a position which he held until 1876.

As bishop, Bourget continued to tour the outlying parishes, including in late 1840 a visit to the north shore of the Ottawa River, where Bourget established eight new missions, creating the foundations for what would eventually become the diocese of Bytown. In November 1840, Bourget moved the training of ecclesiastics from the Grand Séminaire Saint-Jacques to the Petit Séminaire de Montréal, where it would be handled by the Sulpicians. In the same year, he directed four Grey Nuns in the creation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint-Hyacinthe, an offshoot of the Hôpital Général de Montreal, with the result of a new hospital servicing the Saint-Hyacinthe area. In December 1840 Bourget was instrumental in the establishment of the Mélanges religieux, a religious journal intended to be free of politics.

From May 3 to September 23, 1841, Bourget visited Europe, where he sought new priests to staff the schools, missions and parishes occasioned by Canada's burgeoning population. He also raised the issue of the creation of an ecclesiastical province to unify the administration of Canada's dioceses. He concluded his visit to Europe by visiting France, where he observed and was impressed by the religious revival taking place in that country. On June 23, 1841 the Paris newspaper L’Univers stated that Bourget had “come to Europe to seek a reinforcement of workers for the gospel", and indeed his visit was interpreted as an open invitation to apostolic missionaries to bring their missions to Montreal.

The invitation was accepted and the next several years saw an influx of religious congregations into Montreal, including missions from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (arriving December 2, 1841), the Jesuits (arriving May 31, 1842), the Society of the Sacred Heart (arriving December 26, 1842) and the Good Shepherd Sisters (arriving June 7, 1844). When other religious communities, such as the Filles de la Charité de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, cancelled their plans to send missions to Montreal, Bourget instead organised the foundation of new Montreal-based religious communities, including in 1843 the Sisters of Providence under the leadership of Émilie Gamelin, and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary under Eulalie Durocher.

On June 12, 1844, the ecclesiastical province of Quebec was erected by papal bull, and on November 24, 1844 Bourget presided over the ceremonial conferring of the pallium on the metropolitan bishop, Archbishop Joseph Signay, at the cathedral at Quebec. During 1844 Bourget suggested to Signay that Signay should call a first provincial council to establish the authority of the archbishop and demonstrate that the title was not merely honorific. Signay took the suggestion as an insult, which soured his relationship with Bourget.

Bourget was instrumental in several important developments in the city of Kingston, Ontario, at that time newly named as capital of the Province of Canada. He invited the Congregation of Notre-Dame to set up a primary school in Kingston, and in September 1845 arranged for the creation of a hospital staffed by Religious Hospitallers of St Joseph from the Hôtel-Dieu at Montreal which serviced the town and surrounding district.

On May 1, 1845, Bourget directed Rosalie Cadron-Jetté, a widow of his St-Jacques congregation, in the establishment of the Hospice de Sainte-Pélagie, a Montreal-based institute providing care and crisis accommodation for unwed mothers, and on January 16, 1848 he arranged for Cadron-Jetté and her helpers to take nuns' vows and found the Institute of Misericordia Sisters, a religious community dedicated to "girls and women in a situation of maternity out of wedlock and their children".

On 30 August 1850, Bourget founded the Hospice du Saint-Enfant-Jesus (Hospice of the Holy Child Jesus), an institute for the care of deaf-mutes, which was managed first by Charles-Irénée Lagorce, and later by the Clerics of St Viator. The same year, Bourget was instrumental in the foundation of the Sisters of Saint Ann. In 1853 Bourget founded the Annales de la tempérance, a society dedicated to the goal of temperance.