Richard Gagnon is retiring as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg 11 years after arriving in the city.
Gagnon — the eighth archbishop of the archdiocese since it was founded in 1915 — submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Francis in 2023 when he turned 75, the age at which bishops in the Roman Catholic Church must retire.
Following a search process conducted by the Papal Nuncio in Canada, the pope has appointed Murray Chatlain, currently Archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, as his successor.
SASHA SEFTER / FREE PRESS FILES
Winnipeg Roman Catholic Archbishop Richard Gagnon
“It can take a while sometimes to find a successor,” Gagnon said of the time that has passed since he submitted his resignation.
Chatlain will assume his new responsibilities sometime in the next two to three months, at which time Gagnon will return to his home province of B.C.
Gagnon arrived in Winnipeg on New Year’s Eve 2013 from B.C., where he was the Bishop of the Diocese of Victoria. He wasn’t seeking a move, but when he received the call to serve in Winnipeg, he knew he couldn’t refuse.
“You don’t have to accept, but you need a pretty good reason to decline,” he said, noting that the disciples didn’t say no when Jesus called them.
In fact, Gagnon hadn’t intended to go into full-time church ministry at all. After graduating from high school, he studied education and was happy working as a teacher. While teaching, he began to feel a strong call to explore the priesthood.
“I wasn’t looking for a change, but I felt there must be more he should be doing with my life, that I was meant for more than this,” he said.
A trip to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France in the mid-70s confirmed the calling. “I met people of great faith and great need there,” he said. “I felt the call to serve people like them.”
In 1977, Gagnon entered seminary. “It took me away from a comfortable career, but I realized it was my calling,” he said. “It fit who I was as a person. I was made for ministry.”
After seminary, he served in various parishes in B.C., as a chaplain, as founding pastor of St. James Parish in Abbotsford and then, in 2004, as Bishop of Victoria.
Highlights of his time in Winnipeg include getting to know the people in the archdiocese, the archdiocese’s 100th anniversary in 2015 and helping lead a two-year synodal process from 2016-18 that saw the archdiocese come up with new goals to promote discipleship, education and outreach.
He also counts the pandemic as a significant experience for how it “totally altered the way we do church.”
Now, he said, the archdiocese is more online and digital, and parishes have found new ways to faithfully function to serve their members.
His time as president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2019 to 2021 was also significant, especially being able to lead the national church as it sought ways to promote reconciliation with Indigenous people.
That included organizing and helping to lead delegations by Indigenous people to Rome in 2022 to meet the pope, and then being part of the organizing committee for the visit that summer to Canada where Pope Francis apologized to Indigenous people for how the Roman Catholic Church had been part of colonization efforts, including residential schools.
While he takes satisfaction from those efforts, “the work isn’t over,” he said. “Our walking together with Indigenous people as a Church isn’t finished.”
Locally, Gagnon led efforts to raise more than $600,000 towards the national goal of $30 million for the Church’s healing and reconciliation fund.
Does he have any regrets? Only one, he said.
“I regret running out of time to do all I want to do here,” he said. “There is so much more I want to do.”
Albert LeGatt, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, said Gagnon has been a valued colleague and friend.
“We have a very good working and personal relationship,” said LeGatt, noting that Winnipeg is unique in the world in that it has two Roman Catholic archbishops in the same city — one French and one English — along with the Archbishop Lawrence Huculak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy.
“He has been a source of wisdom due to his experience,” he said. “He is a very pastoral person, an archbishop for the people.”
Gagnon awaits the next chapter of his life.
“God will show me the way,” he said.
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John Longhurst
Faith reporter
John Longhurst has been writing for Winnipeg’s faith pages since 2003. He also writes for Religion News Service in the U.S., and blogs about the media, marketing and communications at Making the News.
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