1. Marc Ouellet was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II on 21 October 2003 and was considered a possible candidate for election to the papacy in 2005,2013 and 2025.
34 Facts About Marc Ouellet
1. 2.
Marc Ouellet spent his early career as a priest from 1972 to 2001 developing his credentials as a theologian and working as a seminary teacher and administrator in Canada, Colombia, and Rome.
3.
Marc Ouellet served briefly in the Roman Curia from 2001 to 2003.
4.
Marc Ouellet was born on 8 June 1944 into a Catholic family of eight children in La Motte, Quebec, the third son of Pierre Marc Ouellet and Graziella Michaud.
5.
Marc Ouellet's father, Pierre, was a farmer who was self-taught, and later director-general of the area's school board.
6.
Marc Ouellet attended Mass at Eglise Saint-Luc regularly with his family.
7.
Marc Ouellet later described his family as religious but not very devout.
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Marc Ouellet studied at the Major Seminary of Montreal from 1964 to 1969, earning a licentiate in theology.
9.
Marc Ouellet returned to teaching at the Major Seminary of Manizales, Colombia, joining in its management as well and then performed those same roles at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal beginning in 1976.
10.
Marc Ouellet studied dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University beginning in 1978, earning a doctorate in 1983 with a thesis on Hans Urs von Balthasar.
11.
Marc Ouellet became rector of the Grand Seminaire de Montreal in 1990, then rector of St Joseph's Seminary in Edmonton in 1994.
12.
In 1990 Marc Ouellet joined the editorial board of the North American edition of Communio, a journal of Catholic theology established after the Second Vatican Council by "conservatives disappointed with some of the excesses that followed the Second Vatican Council".
13.
Marc Ouellet became known during his teaching years as "a devotee of Swiss Catholic theologican Hans Urs von Balthasar, a darling of the Catholic right", whose work was the subject of Ouellet's 1983 doctoral thesis.
14.
On 12 July 2005, Marc Ouellet testified on behalf of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops before the Senate of Canada.
15.
Marc Ouellet urged senators to vote against legalising same-sex marriage, referring to it as a "pseudo-marriage, a fiction".
16.
On 21 November 2007, in a letter published in Quebec French-language newspapers, Marc Ouellet apologized for what he described as past "errors" of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec.
17.
In October 2008, Marc Ouellet was sharply critical of a required course newly instituted in Quebec's schools Ethics and religious culture, established as part of a program to eliminate sectarianism from public education.
18.
Marc Ouellet doubted that teachers could provide instruction with "complete neutrality" to "produce a new little Quebecer, pluralist, expert in interreligious relations and critical of all beliefs".
19.
Marc Ouellet advocated the protection of Quebec's religious heritage, which he described as "a force for social integration much more effective than the abstract knowledge of a few simple notions about six or several religions".
20.
Marc Ouellet was a cardinal elector in the 2005 papal conclave.
21.
Marc Ouellet was appointed relator-general of the Synod of Bishops that met in October 2008 to consider "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church".
22.
In June 2011 Marc Ouellet addressed speculation about his odds in a potential conclave, saying that, for him, being pope "would be a nightmare".
23.
Marc Ouellet said that seeing Pope Benedict's workload at close range makes the prospect of the papacy "not very enviable".
24.
Marc Ouellet participated as an elector again in the 2013 conclave, which elected Benedict XVI's successor, Pope Francis.
25.
Marc Ouellet was among those receiving the most votes in the first two ballots.
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Pope Francis 26.
Marc Ouellet was made a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 16 October 2010.
27.
On 29 January 2011, Marc Ouellet was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a member of Secretariat of State.
28.
On 6 April 2011, Ouellet was named a member of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and on 7 March 2012 a member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
29.
Shortly before the October 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, which was expected to hear some bishops advocate for the ordination of married men to the priesthood, Marc Ouellet published a book expressing his skepticism, Friends of the Bridegroom: For a Renewed Vision of Priestly Celibacy.
30.
Marc Ouellet noted that rural communities of the region struggled to provide training even for catechists.
31.
Marc Ouellet called for a "vocational culture" that would engage both laity and religious.
32.
Marc Ouellet is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, and German.
33.
Some texts published under Marc Ouellet's name have been found to be plagiarized from multiple sources, possibly by his alleged ghostwriter, Fr Thomas Rosica.
34.
The Vatican began an internal preliminary investigation into her charge against Marc Ouellet in February 2021, led by Jacques Servais, a Jesuit priest and theologian.