Detailed Biography
Father Émilien Tardif and fellow religious
Émilien Tardif 1928-1999
Missionary of the Sacred Heart
Recognised as a servant of God by the Vatican
Émilien Tardif was born on 6 June 1928 in St-Zacharie de Beauce. He is the son of Léonidas Tardif, a farmer, born 17 June 1889, died in 1964, and of Anna Larochelle, born 17 March 1894 and died in 1964. His parents married on 22 July 1912 in St-Prosper in Beauce. Émilien is the 7th living child of a family of 14 children, including: Armand, Rose-Alma, Yvonne, Philippe, Marie-Reine, Louis-Nazaire, Adrien, Aurélie, Marie-Thérèse-Adrienne, Armandine and Marc-Yvon. In the summer of 1940, the family settled in Rapide-Danseur in Abitibi. The house is situated two miles from the school, and the schoolchildren had to get there on foot.
Rapide Danseur
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Beauport
Émilien’s vocation was born at a very young age. When he was only 12 years old, he had a dream in which he saw himself in a white cassock teaching a great crowd and healing people by invoking the name of Jesus. All of this took on its importance during a sermon by Father Gabriel Groleau, who was a missionary in Japan. At 13 years of age, Émilien left his family to go and study with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Beauport, where his brother Armand was already studying.
The minor seminary of Beauport
This congregation was founded in Issoudun in France by Abbé Jules Chevalier in 1854. From 1941 to 1948, he therefore studied at the minor seminary of Beauport. On 8 September 1948, Émilien began his novitiate with the M.S.C. at Sainte-Clotilde-de-Horton, and the following year he pronounced his first vows. From 1949 to 1952, Émilien completed his studies in theology in Quebec. He was ordained priest on 24 June 1955 and would celebrate his first Mass at Rapide-Danseur. Mission in Latin America. After his ordination, Father Émilien Tardif asked to go on mission.
On 16 September 1956, he arrived in the Dominican Republic and began his work. He was nicknamed ‘Emiliano.’ From 1956 to 1963, he would be a professor at the Seminary of San José de las Matas. From 1959 to 1969, he would direct the family magazine Amigo del Hogar (friend of the home). The circulation increased from 8,000 to 26,000 copies. From 1966 to 1971, he became Superior of the M.S.C. in the Dominican Republic. In 1971, he would be named provincial administrator of the M.S.C. in the Dominican Republic and would be responsible for a movement for couples.
Miraculous healing and Charismatic Renewal. On 14 June 1973, Father Tardif felt unwell during a meeting of the Christian Family Movement in Santiago. He was transported urgently to a medical centre. The doctors diagnosed acute pulmonary tuberculosis. He was repatriated to Quebec and transported to the Laval hospital in Quebec. He was told that he had at least a year of treatment before recovering a relative state of health.
A few days after his admission to the hospital, a group of five lay people: Mrs Rose Catudal with her husband and their son, Rose, Father Émilien’s sister, and her husband Paul-Rémi Paquet, all belonging to the ‘Charismatic Renewal’ group, paid him a visit. On entering his room, they proposed that he ask God for his healing in the same way that Jesus did in Palestine. Father Tardif recalled that he had little sympathy for this movement and that in the Dominican Republic he had mocked them.
He had said, as Provincial of his congregation: “It is not so much prayers that Latin America needs, but commitment.”
However, he told himself that as a priest he could not refuse their prayers, so he accepted. The group of five came up to him, who was seated, and they laid hands on him. This was new for him and made him so uncomfortable that he asked them to close the door. However, he would later say that the Holy Spirit had had time to enter. Father Tardif then felt a strong heat in his lungs and thought he was going to die. It is quite the opposite that happened. He was completely healed and the doctors understood none of it. “It is a miracle,” and he left the hospital a few days later.
Father Émilien Tardif
Charismatic Renewal
Father Tardif came out of it completely transformed and set himself to studying the ‘Charismatic Renewal’ phenomenon. Filled with enthusiasm, after having asked the permission of his superiors, he committed himself to this movement. He thus took part in prayer groups and observed the first miracles that took place, notably that of Hélène Lacroix. Return to Saint-Domingue and new evangelisation. On 8 July 1974, ‘Padre Emiliano’ returned to Saint-Domingue transformed, the divine light reflecting on his face; he was filled with a peaceful and serene and contagious joy.
He speaks of God with assurance, a God full of compassion, of goodness and of mercy. He asked his community to take care of the prayer groups of the Charismatic Renewal, and his community gave him the right to do so for the rest of his life. He first created a group in Pimentel; he prayed over people and obtained healings and conversions by the masses. In five weeks his prayer group went from 200 to more than 4,000; this would be the beginning of a great and wonderful spiritual adventure. His reputation spread and he began to travel throughout the world.
Olympic Centre of Montreal
Father Tardif was invited to France by the ‘Emmanuel’ charismatic community, founded in 1976 by Pierre Goursat and Martine Laffitte-Catta. He gathered a crowd of 25,000 people. In Lebanon, in four days, he would gather more than 100,000 people. He gathered crowds of 8,000, 15,000, 20,000 people!
His healing Masses attracted considerable crowds. Several carefully documented healings are attributed to his charism, among them cases of terminal-stage cancer or of AIDS. ref. http://trinite-sainte-et-mariemamere.over-blog.com/article-36510298.html
Lay community
Maria Sangiovanni, Évaristo Guzman, deacon, and Padre Emiliano Tardif
On 28 November 1982, he founded the lay community ‘The Servants of the Living Christ,’ a charismatic community of lay people that spread rapidly throughout the world. The mother house of the community is in Saint-Domingue and counts more than 600 members. Until his death, he would visit more than 72 countries, preaching retreats to all, and especially to priests. Death and beatification process. It was in Córdoba, in Argentina, where he was animating a retreat for priests, that Padre Emiliano died, on 8 June 1999 at the age of 71. He would be buried in the cemetery of Cristo Está Vivo in Santiago with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
Research and design: Réjean Vigneux. Revision: Marielle Lefebvre. Updated: 12-2016
Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus López Rodríguez
Beatification process
On 15 July 2007, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus López Rodríguez announced the setting in motion of the beatification process at the same time as he announced the exhumation of Father Tardif’s remains. The new tomb of Father Émilien Tardif is in the crypt of the church of Christ the Risen (Cristo Resucitado) in Santo Domingo. On 31 October 2010, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints announced that permission had been given to begin the Diocesan Inquiry for the Cause of canonisation of the Servant of God, Émilien Tardif. Bibliography. ÉMILIEN TARDIF, MAN OF GOD, Maria A. Sangiovanni, Ediciones MSC Amigo del hogar.
Dominican Republic (809) 548-7594, Canada, Comptoir Missionnaire l’Assomption Inc, Gabrielle Goupil (418) 226-0306. Jesus is the Messiah, Émilien Tardif and José H. Prado Flores (Paperback - 1 May 2004). Jesus made me a witness, by Émilien Tardif and José H. Prado Flores (Paperback - 23 February 1997). Father Tardif in Lebanon, by Émilien Tardif (Paperback - 23 February 1997). The great sermon of Father Émilien Tardif, by Émilien Tardif and Pierre Nadeau (Paperback - 1996). Heal the sick, by Émilien Tardif (Livre ouvert - January 1995). In the fire of love, by Émilien Tardif and José H. Prado Flores (Paperback - 24 August 1994). In the fire of love: around the world without a suitcase, by Émilien Tardif (Stock - January 1994).
Healing prayers of Father Émilien Tardif
The charism of healing, by Émilien Tardif (Pneumathèque - January 1993). The joy of healing our brothers, by Émilien Tardif and Famille chrétienne (Periodical) (Unknown binding - 1991). Jesus is the Messiah: the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, by Émilien Tardif (Pneumathèque - January 1989).