Bishops Elect New CCCB Executive Committee

Wednesday, September 27 2017

(CCCB – Ottawa)… On the third day of its meeting, the Plenary Assembly of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) elected the Most Reverend Lionel Gendron, P.S.S., Bishop of Saint-Jean-Longueuil, as its next President, and the Most Reverend Richard Gagnon, Archbishop of Winnipeg, as its next Vice President. The incoming Executive Committee also includes two Co-Treasurers: from the French Sector, for a second term, the Most Reverend Luc Cyr, Archbishop of Sherbrooke, and from the English Sector, for a first term, the Most Reverend William Terrence McGrattan, Bishop of Calgary. The Bishops reflected also for a second time during this Plenary on Amoris Laetitia, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on love in the family. The guest speaker for this reflection was again His Eminence Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, and Archbishop Emeritus of Québec.

Bishop Gendron will succeed as President the Most Reverend Douglas Crosby, O.M.I., Bishop of Hamilton, who ends his term at the end of the 2017 Plenary Assembly. Born in Saint-Quentin, New Brunswick, 12 June 1944, Bishop Gendron was ordained to the priesthood on 31 May 1969, after studying theology at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal. He joined the Priests of Saint Sulpice (the Sulpicians), and was later elected Superior of their Canadian province in 1994, a position he held until his nomination as Auxiliary Bishop of Montréal in 2006. Named Bishop of Saint-Jean-Longueuil on 28 October 2010, he served two terms on the CCCB Executive Committee as the French Sector Co-Treasurer, beginning in 2011, and has been Vice President since 2015.

The newly elected Vice President, Archbishop Richard Gagnon, was born in 1948 in Lethbridge, Alberta. After seminary studies at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome, Archbishop Gagnon was ordained to the priesthood in 1983 for the Archdiocese of Vancouver. He was named Bishop of Victoria in 2004 and appointed Archbishop of Winnipeg in October 2013. He has served from 2007 to 2008 on the CCCB Permanent Council as the regional representative of the Assembly of Western Catholic Bishops.

Daily briefings on the 2017 Plenary Assembly

For a sixth year, daily briefings on the Plenary are broadcast in English and French on the Internet with the collaboration of Salt + Light TV. At the end of each day, Monday to Thursday, except Tuesday, the CCCB Vice President, currently the Most Reverend Lionel Gendron, P.S.S., Bishop of Saint-Jean-Longueuil, and the Co-Treasurer, the Most Reverend Anthony Mancini, Archbishop of Halifax-Yarmouth, review the day’s major topics and events. On Friday, the daily briefing will feature the newly elected CCCB President and Vice President.