The Catholic Church in Canada is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and the Canadian Bishops Conference. It has the largest number of followers of a religion in Canada with 46% of Canadians (13,070,000 as of 2008) baptized as Catholics. There are 72 dioceses and about 8,000 priests in Canada.
Catholicism arrived in Canada in 1534, when Jacques Cartier planted a cross at Gaspe. In 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the first Catholic colony in Quebec City. Later, in 1611, he established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, which later became a Catholic colony for trade and missionary activity.
Some important Catholic sites in Montreal are Notre-Dame Basilica, Saint Joseph's Oratory, Blessed Brother Andre's chapel, and Marie-Reine-du-Monde. In Quebec, Notre Dames des Victoires, Notre-Dame de Quebec Cathedral and Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec.
In Nova Scotia, St. Francis Xavier University, a Scot Catholic university associated with the Antigonish Movement and the highland games.
Within Canada the hierarchy consists of:
|
There is also a Ukrainianan Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg, which has suffragan dioceses in Edmonton, New Westminster, Saskatoon, and Toronto.
There are also three other eparchies in Canada:
- The Eparchy of Saint-Maron de Montréal (Maronite)
- The Eparchy of Saint-Sauveur de Montréal (Melkite) and
- The Eparchy of Saints Cyril and Methodius of Toronto (Slovakian)
- Eparchy of Mar Addai of Toronto (Chaldean)
There is also a Military Ordinariate of Canada for Canadian military personnel.
Famous quotes containing the words roman, catholicism and/or canada:
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.”
—C.S. (Clive Staples)
“I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)