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Hard turn toward secularism could affect Easter tradition
The annual Way of the Cross procession in Quebec City and others in the province could be a thing of the past if the provincial government brings in a new law banning public prayer.
Fonds-Daniel Abel
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Christians in Quebec will be taking to the streets on Good Friday, April 18, to follow behind a Cross and witness to their faith in Jesus.
This year, however, they will do so under a curious political shadow as this once staunchly Roman Catholic province is now openly discussing the possibility that public prayer be forbidden.
In October 2024, after a flurry of press reports of Islamic influence on Montreal-area public schools, Premier Francois Legault told reporters he had instructed his team to look for ways to ban praying in public.
Following that announcement, Trois-Rivières Bishop Martin Laliberté, president of the Quebec Bishops’ Assembly, published an open letter asserting that “prayer is not dangerous.”
But last month, Minister of Secularism Jean-François Roberge announced a government committee will be struck to investigate how to further strengthen secularism in the province and he reiterated that the government was seriously considering a ban on prayer in public spaces, including during protests.
In the meantime, Quebecers will carry on with the ancient tradition of walking with the Cross in the streets on Good Friday. In Quebec, many of these walks are both bilingual and ecumenical, drawing together French and English, Protestant and Catholic, the so-called “two solitudes,” united in prayer.
What is now called the “ecumenical walk with the Cross” in the old section of Quebec City originally involved only the English Protestant churches.
The Very Reverend Christian Schreiner, Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Quebec City, told The Catholic Register that everything changed when Cardinal Gérald Lacroix became Archbishop of Quebec.
The Good Friday Walk in Quebec City had been all but abandoned 20 years ago. When Lacroix saw the attempt by the Protestant churches to revive the tradition, Schreiner joked the cardinal asked with excitement, “May we please play with you guys?”
“Of course we were thrilled,” said Schreiner, “because in a city where 98 per cent are francophones, Cardinal Lacroix naturally gets more media attention. That helped us get the word out about this event. We regularly have 200-250 people who walk.”
The event is fully bilingual, and the biggest expense is the printing costs for the booklets, what Schreiner calls a “small novel.”
“We read the whole Passion according to St. John, and its important for the crowd to be able to follow and participate. We always have both the English and the French, colour-coded for which one is being said and which one you can follow in the translation.”
In Montreal, the lay organization Communion and Liberation (CL Canada) have organized a Good Friday Way of the Cross for close to 40 years. The procession begins at the historic Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours in the Old Port and ends at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral.
In a 2021 post on the Montreal archdiocesan website, CL national coordinator John Zucchi explained that the walk had very humble beginnings.
“At the very first one, there were just three adults and two children in a park one intensely cold day — so cold, in fact, that the tiny group ended up seeking shelter in the warmth of a car.”
Undertaken as a “simple sign to the city,” it slowly evolved from a “modest procession” in the Old Port of Montreal to one of the largest public demonstrations of Catholic devotion in the province. Led by Archbishop Christian Lépine, the event now gathers upwards of 1,000 participants.
It is not just the two provincial urban centres that host such events.
Lorna Jean “Jeannie” Smith, longtime parishioner at Marie-Reine-du-Monde and St. Patrick’s Parish in Rawdon, has been attending the ecumenical Good Friday Parade in the town for over 25 years.
The walk between the Catholic and Anglican churches in Rawdon, population 11,700, is approximately a kilometre. Smith told the Register that “the Knights of Columbus lead the parade with the Cross” and the local Sûreté du Québec officers make sure that the intersection is clear of traffic when the parade passes through.
Though spring storms, which can involve rain, ice or snow, or sometimes all three, are common, there is always a small group who take to the streets whatever the conditions.
“A few of us always say, ‘We'll walk.’ It’s not the end of the world, we put a raincoat on, and off we go,” Smith said.
As in Quebec City, the Rawdon parade is both ecumenical and bilingual.
“We'll be starting off in the Catholic church and there'll be prayers. We'll have a French reader and an English reader,” said Smith.
When asked about the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) plans for banning public prayer, Smith responds that the citizens of Rawdon aren’t really praying as they walk between churches.
“We're not praying and we're not influencing anyone in a school or anything like that. I mean, it's no worse than going to a cemetery and having quiet prayers at the end of the service.”
Scheiner, unprompted, offered the same response as Smith.
“Technically, we're not praying in the public space. We're just walking and carrying a Cross,” he said.
“We continue this because obviously there is no policy, but it might be interesting as a case study if somebody from the CAQ would say, ‘Hey, why are you walking with the Cross in old Quebec?’ ”
A version of this story appeared in the April 13, 2025, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline "Is this Quebec's last Way of the Cross?".
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