Father Henri Roy (1898 – 1965)
Founder of the Pius X Secular Institute

A man who was inhabited by a love for Jesus, wishing that all his life become a proclamation of the Good News, Father Henri Roy touched many lives.

The sharing that follow is that of Thérèse and Henri Séguin and Jeanne and Julien White, leaders from the very start of the Young Catholic Worker movement in Montreal. We discover in their words the apostolic fire that Father Roy gave as a heritage to all whom he encountered. The witnessing was published in the Catholic magazine Je Crois, in June of 1985.

Father Roy was “obsessed” with the desire to become a saint, and he did not even want to consider the possibility that others not become saints also. He wished to pass on this desire to others, specially the poor and the youth.

He had chosen to work with the youth of the working class. Having learned to know them, he knew that it was possible to find among them young men and women willing to give themselves without reservation for the salvation of their brothers. He has discovered among the youth the possibility to put their talents to the service of their brothers and sisters of the working class.

His way of reaching out and establishing a contact with them was something out of the ordinary; he knew just by a look, how to discover and appreciate the richness hidden in the depths of the soul, even though an exterior shell many times held no promise. From the onset of the first meeting with him, we had a vague impression of being as transparent as a window recently cleaned with Windex, such was the unfolding of our life’s film as if he had seen us be born.
He knew however how to be convincing and enthusiastic and you left that meeting as “light as a bird”, enriched with an immense love for Jesus and a boundless confidence in oneself and in the whole universe! Without being totally aware, Father Roy had just given you an orientation that would mark your entire life!

From the second meeting, it was the “sending off in mission” to your brothers and sisters in your surroundings. He had detected in you talents that surely even you ignored and he was convinced to do everything possible so that they could bear fruit. This is how he entrusted you with tasks you never would have dared dream of, but he knew were up to your measure because he knew you would undertake it “as a team” with Jesus.

Father Roy, who had formed us to his ideal, demanded the maximum from us, and we would give it with joy because he had total confidence in us; furthermore, what he requested from other, he had already given himself… and even more.

He was innovative in many areas and, justifiably, one would say that he was “twenty years ahead of his time”; one could have sait 40 or even 50 years and it would have been just as true!

Thanks to him, Canada has known specialized Catholic Action and profitted abundantly from apostolic repercussions from Young Catholic Workers, Young Catholic Farmers, Young Catholic Students, Catholic Worker League, etc. Even if most of these movements, who used to be so dynamic, don’t offer nowaday the same image, there remains evident signs in the men and women who used to be dedicated in them. Witness of this, a priest who encountered a YCW leader of the past who admitted to her: “When an apostolic action is done today, I discover a former member of Catholic Action.”

We thank tthe Lord every day for having placed Father Roy on our path; he remains and will always remain in our heart:

• a priest, true priest, all priest;
  
  
• a man madly in love with Jesus, prayerful, for whom the Eucharist that he celebrated would carry us to heaven;
  
  
• a priest whose first and constant worry was the salvation of souls so as to “populate heaven to the britches”;
  
  
• a happy priest, joyful, even in the hardest trials, for he wasn’t spared suffering, neither physical nor spiritual, which was, in a way, the price to pay for his success;
  
  
• a coach, a vanguard, a relentless worker, and a great, great, very great friend of the youth, especially the impoverished.