Roman Catholic Bishop Remi Joseph De Roo considered himself a pilgrim. Those who knew and loved him consider him a prophet as well, and some believe he will ultimately be remembered as one of history’s greatest Catholic bishops for his lifelong commitment to modernizing the Church.
Bishop De Roo died in Victoria on Feb. 1, three weeks before his 98th birthday. While his time as the charismatic and controversial bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria had come to an end long before, he continued to lecture and minister right up until the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
“During the pandemic, he spent a lot of time reflecting – for all of us, it has been a time to reimagine what we want to be, what will come next,” says Pearl Gervais, a lifelong friend and co-worker who first met Bishop De Roo when he was a young chaplain for a Winnipeg youth group she belonged to.
Ms. Gervais provided a suite in her Nanaimo, B.C., home for Bishop De Roo after he retired from the diocese in 1999. He lived there until his worsening health forced a move into Victoria’s Mount St. Mary Hospital four months before his death.
“In these past two years, Remi continued to be on the phone at least three or four times a week, calling someone who was elderly, lonely, needing comfort,” says Ms. Gervais, who lectured extensively with Bishop De Roo over the years.
“We took a lot of courses together on Zoom. He constantly reminded all of us that ministry never stops, personal growth and spiritual growth never stop. It was very moving to be around Remi in this last period.”
Born in Swan Lake, Man., on Feb. 24, 1924, Remi De Roo was one of eight children born to farmers Josephine (née de Pape) and Raymond De Roo.
He graduated from Winnipeg’s Saint-Boniface College (now Saint-Boniface University) then earned a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Rome.
He was the youngest Catholic bishop in history when Pope John XXIII appointed him as bishop of the Victoria diocese in 1962. That year was also the start of the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II.
The 16 directives that came out of that council launched difficult conversations for Roman Catholics that continue to this day around topics such as contraception, women’s role in church leadership and whether priests should be allowed to marry.
Vatican II also marked a momentous shift in the Catholic world view from one of a hierarchy with the Pope at the top, to one of a circle with all Catholics equal. That was a view that Bishop De Roo had held from his earliest days in the Church.
“Remi’s impact was to bring about a more human-centred church that cared about people – simple words but powerful in the application,” says former Canadian senator and author Douglas Roche, another lifelong friend of Bishop De Roo who met him 60 years ago when Mr. Roche was editor of the now-defunct Western Catholic Reporter.
“He was a prophet, and prophets have a rough go. Prophets are almost by definition set apart from the establishment of their era – you never find a prophet who’s giving you the establishment line. People who liked him really liked him. People who didn’t like him really didn’t like him.”
One of the most difficult chapters in Bishop De Roo’s life were the years immediately after his mandatory retirement from the Victoria diocese at the age of 75. His successor, the late Bishop Raymond Roussin, went public soon after with allegations of questionable investments by the diocese.
Funds had been invested in Arabian horses. When that resulted in losses, the diocese partnered with the same person, Seattle lawyer Joseph Finley, on a property investment in Washington State. Instead of receiving a quick return, the diocese ended up the guarantor for a high-interest mortgage.
For 10 years, Bishop De Roo endured much media scrutiny as Vancouver Island Catholics reached deep to raise $13-million in bonds to buy out the mortgage, some diocese properties were sold, and Mr. Finley pursued the diocese in court for breach of contract.
A damning report in 2000 from the Canadian Catholic Commission found it “truly beyond belief” that Bishop De Roo had put such trust in the diocese’s long-time financial administrator Muriel Clemenger. No outside audits of diocese finances had been conducted for the 15 years that she and Bishop De Roo worked together.
Never one to lay blame, Bishop De Roo wouldn’t comment about how such investment decisions had come to be, even while his silence confused supporters and provided fodder for his critics.
Over time, matters sorted out, though not without lingering bitterness. Bond purchasers got their money back. A Washington appeals court ruled in 2005 that the land investment was “sound,” and the diocese sold the property the next year for $16.5-million. Mr. Finley’s lawsuit was thrown out in 2008.
Ms. Clemenger finally sent a letter of apology to Bishop De Roo in 2009, two years before her death, and asked that he make it public. “The fault was mine,” she wrote. “It was a very serious miscarriage of all that is just that you were made to take the blame publicly.”
That Bishop De Roo not only survived that period but continued his lecturing and ministry for 22 more years speaks to his resilience, says Patrick Jamieson, whose 35-year career as the editor of Island Catholic News has revolved around the life, times and teachings of Bishop De Roo.
“Church politics are things that can destroy people, so for Remi to withstand that was really something,” Mr. Jamieson says.
Ms. Gervais says Bishop De Roo found consolation in those difficult years knowing that the man he revered the most, Jesus, had endured much worse. “Remi had people who held onto him. They knew enough to support a fellow pilgrim. They reached out, loving and without judgment.”
Cardinal Michael Czerny travelled from Rome to speak at Bishop De Roo’s Feb. 12 funeral at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Victoria. The two men met in the late 1970s in El Salvador, where both were part of an emerging “liberation theology” that led them to stand with impoverished people and challenge authority.
Cardinal Czerny spoke at the funeral of Pope Francis’s words in January, when the pontiff urged people to “walk the paths of the people of our time” and to draw close to those who have been wounded by life.
“The Holy Father could easily have had our beloved Bishop Remi in mind when, with a certain tough love, He spelled out these challenges,” Cardinal Czerny said. “With the intercession of our beloved ancestor, let us – even with the risk of being, once in a while, just a little bit irritating – embrace them with firm resolve and inextinguishable hope.”
Bishop De Roo found many opportunities to apply the tenets of liberation theology in Canada as well. He was a vocal critic of the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement in the late 1980s, and on occasion got on the wrong side of then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He challenged 1980s-era B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm’s government for its union-busting legislation.
When media mogul Conrad Black wrote in a 1987 piece in Maclean’s magazine that capitalism was “a concept profoundly rooted in the human personality and antedates Christ,” Bishop De Roo responded that capitalism “is not Christian and not even authentically human.”
An enduring legacy from Bishop De Roo’s time leading the diocese is the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. Centre director Paul Bramadat says Bishop De Roo was “at the very genesis” of the centre when it was founded in 1991, and helped raise the majority of the endowment that the centre relies on.
“Remi liked the idea of a research centre in which experts from any scholarly discipline would pursue their own research projects in a supportive environment,” Dr. Bramadat says.
“He had a huge footprint within especially progressive Catholic circles. And yet, when he would join our daily meetings at the CSRS, he would treat a 22-year-old atheist master’s student with the same care, curiosity and respect as he would treat a world-famous Oxford scholar who was a fellow at the centre.”
Under Bishop De Roo, the diocese gave the university a priceless collection of almost 1,700 books on theology and philosophy from the 16th century that Victoria Bishop Charles Seghers had brought back to the city from Europe in the 1800s. It also gifted a $155,000 St. James Bible to the centre that recreates hand-drawn calligraphy and illustrations from the Middle Ages.
Bishop De Roo had the rare honour of receiving an Indigenous name upon his arrival in the diocese in 1962. He was named Siem Le Pleet Schoo-Kun, roughly translated as “High Priest Swan,” in a Tsawout First Nations ceremony that re-enacted the arrival of Victoria’s first bishop in 1845.
He continued to drum and dance with local First Nations many times over the years, Ms. Gervais says. But Mr. Jamieson notes that relationships started to change in the 1990s, when “things got more political” between First Nations and the Church.
Bishop De Roo, who maintained strong family relations throughout his life, leaves three sisters, Clara Major, Alma Verdonck and Madeline Martinez.
In his eulogy at the funeral, Mr. Roche said history will eventually make visible the tremendous impact of Bishop De Roo’s commitment to advancing the directives of Vatican II.
“Bishop Remi is gone from us. I have lost my dearest friend,” Mr. Roche said. “But I know that I will see him soon. And I’m sure that in our next conversation, he will tell me something new about the Second Vatican Council.”
Published in The Globe and Mail on Feb. 17, 2022
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