Victorien Faucher, priest
Friend of Father Émilien Tardif of St-Zacharie
Holy Spirit, enlighten us; Mama Mary, pray for us. I met Émilien Tardif at the Grand Séminaire de Québec in 1953. I was beginning my studies in Theology to become a priest, while he was already in his third year of Theology and lodged with the Fathers of the Sacred Heart in Beauport, his community. Even though we come from the same parish, St-Zacharie in Beauce, I had never met him before, since he and his parents had moved to Abitibi.
Old church of St-Zacharie, Beauce
Church of St-Bruno, Raide Danseur, Abitibi
I remember: we had a few courses in common with about a hundred other seminarians, and during recreation (a health break?) we would meet and talk about our families, our origins, since my mother was also a Tardif (Maria Tardif) but with no close family tie. What I remember from these meetings is that Émilien was the man of the broad smile, warm in his welcome. After his ordination and his departure for the mission in St-Domingue, I did not see him again until 1973, the year of his serious illness and of his miraculous healing.
It was at St-Côme de Beauce, during evenings of charismatic prayer, that I met him several times, where after the gatherings we shared the wonders that the Holy Spirit was accomplishing in souls and bodies: conversions, healings, prayers in tongues, exercises of charisms, deliverances during special ministries.
Charismatic Renewal
It was the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal in Beauce and in Quebec, and we had the opportunity together to defend the Renewal on the Radio, answering open lines to several sometimes insidious questions. He was bolder than I, and he replied with great accuracy and wisdom.
During a retreat of Father Jean-Paul Régimbal, the founder of the Charismatic Renewal in Quebec, who had come to preach at St-Côme in October 1973, I remember that a lady of St-Côme who had a charismatic gift of prophecy had come to bring a message for Father Émilien Tardif at the presbytery, while Émilien was absent; she had asked me to pass on to him the following message, saying that the Lord wanted Father Émilien to evangelize across the whole world.
After twenty-five years of evangelization in more than 70 countries, I see that the prophecy was accurate, and that Émilien did nothing but respond with eagerness and love to the many requests for retreats made to him each year, throughout the world.
I often heard him preach when he was passing through one hall or another in Beauce or during charismatic congresses, and he was so simple and within people's reach, with small examples or lived testimonies, and above all with such a conviction that the Lord is alive and wants to fill his people by fulfilling the promises of the Gospel. He drew us to trust the Lord. His ministries of intercession for the sick after communion revealed to us his priest's heart, the heart of a pastor who so desires to relieve the misery of the people of God by being the instrument of Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of all souls.
I often welcomed him, during his very short vacation days when he was passing through at his sister Rose Paquet Tardif and Paul-Rémi Paquet's, and how he loved to testify to the wonders that the Lord had accomplished during his evangelizations! He questioned me a great deal about what the Lord was doing in our Christian communities through the Charismatic Renewal. He was also very worried to see how faith had declined in many parishes and the dropping out of many of our baptized. He felt the importance of forming lay people and small prayer groups to pray for non-believers and to evangelize.
In the Service of Christ and of Evangelization
A year and a half before his death, in January 1997, I had the advantage of going with another fellow priest (Abbé Ghislain Roy) to spend a week with him, accompanying him on his evangelization tour, at St-Domingue, at Santiago, at Nagua during the novena of Altagratia, visiting the small communities of the Living Christ and the several schools of faith he founded. There I saw and touched with my own eyes the action of the Holy Spirit in these communities of charity and of commitment in the service of Christ in Evangelization. What joy and what hope this stirred in me! There I discovered a Father Émilien Tardif, a leader who looked to the long term; a good father for all these people who commit themselves to pray, to adore, and to make known the Lord Jesus and his teachings.
I saw how Father Émilien was a man “eaten up”. He no longer belonged to himself; so many people needed to meet him for the organization of the apostolate or to have him pray over them. Often he could not even have lunch quietly with us; it was the telephone, the people who called for him for a sick person or something else.
He prayed his breviary in the van and invited us to pray the Rosary with him as we moved from one city to another. I never heard him complain that he was too busy, and I never saw him refuse to meet a sick person, a destitute one.
Where I discovered the greatness of Émilien's soul is here, in Quebec, when he was ridiculed and attacked for his healing ministry on the airwaves of a television station. He found it difficult, but he did not become discouraged, nor did he take revenge. He found an occasion to grow in humility, knowing that the cross is the price to pay for the salvation of souls.
As for me, I have lost a great friend who inspired me greatly in my priestly apostolate to give “Christ to souls and souls to Christ”, but I am sure that I have gained in heaven a great intercessor to watch over me and the people of God. Long live the Living Christ who shaped the so generous heart and the so loving soul of Father Émilien.
Victorien Faucher, priest
St-Côme de Beauce, P.Q.
Canada.
November 16, 1999.