Youth in the Archbishopric

A new star shot high in the ecclesiastical firmament of Canada last week. In Ottawa, the Apostolic Delegate announced that the Most Rev. Maurice Roy, Bishop of Three Rivers and the youngest Roman Catholic prelate in the Dominion, had been named by the Pope to head the Dominion's oldest diocese, as eleventh Archbishop of Quebec. He will succeed the late Rodrigue Cardinal Villeneuve.

When he is enthroned, 42-year-old Bishop Roy will return to the city of his birth, where his father is a judge and good friend of Premier Maurice Duplessis. The Archbishop-designate has another tie with the Quebec Nationalist leader: Duplessis is a resident of his present diocese, Three Rivers.

But Bishop Roy has something else which commends him to Ottawa and the rest of non-French Canada. He was one of the first Roman Catholic chaplains to volunteer for service overseas in the first weeks of the war, in which he rolled up a distinguished record. In 5 1/2 years overseas, he took the route marches of the famed "Van Doos" (the Royal 22nd Regiment) in stride, spent nine months in the lines in Italy, then almost a year in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Colonel Roy finished the war as chief Roman Catholic padre. Dispatches mentioned his "extremely courageous conduct"; he received the Order of the British Empire.

Tall and ruggedly built, Bishop Roy has a scholarly, ascetic personality which brought him his only criticism from the troops: "He's much too saintly for us." He took his B.A. at Laval University when only 18. After ordination, he studied in Paris, returned to Canada (with doctorates in both theology and philosophy) to a teaching position at Laval. After helping to write a new constitution for the university and carrying it to Rome for the Pope's acceptance, he became Laval's chaplain.

Quebec Catholics, and Canadians at large, were quick to point out the parallel between his career and that of Cardinal Villeneuve. The latter was a seminarian, free from factional ties, consecrated at 46 and given the red hat less than three years later. Canadians wondered whether Monsignor Roy would complete the parallel by becoming a cardinal at the next Papal consistory.

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