Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for Bishops, turned 80 yesterday, Saturday, June 8, which means he will no longer participate in the next conclave to elect the next Pope.
In this way, the cardinal electors who could still participate in a future conclave now drop to 126, out of a total of 236 members of the College of Cardinals.
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Cardinal Ouellet is known for his orthodoxy regarding Catholic doctrine, such as when in 2019, in the face of various pressures to promote the priesthood of married men within the framework of the Amazon Synod, he published a book in which he defends priestly celibacy, titled “Priests, friends of the husband. For a renewed vision of celibacy.”
In recent years, the cardinal of Canadian origin had to face accusations of abuse, from the time he was Archbishop of Quebec (Canada), to which the prefect emeritus always declared himself innocent.
Furthermore, Pope Francis pointed out in this regard that “there are not sufficient elements to open a canonical investigation.”
More recently, in April 2024, the Vatican responded to France with a “note verbale” following an “alleged decision” by a civil court against the cardinal, on a case related to the expulsion of a nun from her religious institute, in which the cardinal carried out an investigation.
A Vatican statement then specified that an alleged decision of this type, by a French court, could be constituted as “a serious violation of the fundamental rights to religious freedom and freedom of association of the Catholic faithful.”
Who is Cardinal Marc Ouellet?
Marc Armand Ouellet was born on June 8, 1944 in Lamotte, Canada. He earned his bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Laval and entered the Major Seminary of Montreal, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in theology in 1968.
At only 23 years old, he was ordained a priest on May 25, 1968.
He has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and theology from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome and a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
For ten years, he was a professor and rector of various seminaries in Colombia, such as those in Bogotá and Manizales; and those of Edmonton and Montreal in Canada.
He was appointed Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on March 3, 2001 and consecrated bishop in the Vatican on March 19, 2001 by Pope John Paul II.
He was appointed Archbishop of Quebec on November 15, 2002. He was created cardinal in the consistory of October 21, 2003.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him prefect of the Congregation – today the Dicastery – of Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
He was in those positions until January 30, 2023, when Pope Francis accepted his resignation at the age of 78 and chose as his replacement Cardinal Robert Prevost, an American Augustinian who was Bishop of Chiclayo (Peru), diocese in which the latter He served since 2014 as apostolic administrator.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.