Bishop Remi De Roo 100th Birthday Symposium Features New Book
Patrick Jamieson, Victoria
Volume 38 Issue 4, 5 & 6 | Posted: July 7, 2023
The new book of the selected writings and speeches of Bishop Remi De Roo (1924-2022) will be highlighted by its editor Pearl Gervais at the 100th birthday Symposium for the esteemed churchman who died close to his 98th birthday two February’s ago. The author of several books, he was renowned for his social justice work in society and his prophetic efforts at reforming the Catholic Church as well as his own special personality that influenced so many individuals both within and outside the formal church.
His addresses to social movements are among the texts selected by Ms. Gervais, who was a long-time associate of the Manitoba priest who came to serve as Bishop of Victoria in 1962, for the next 37.5 years. De Roo was chaplain to Gervais’ Catholic Student organization at St. Boniface, MB in the 1950s.
The symposium which is organized in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Victoria for February 24, 2024 will focus on these three aspects of the De Roo Experience – Church, Society and Person. De Roo was a founder of the CSRS.
Special emphasis is upon the direct and grass roots experience of Remi De Roo by groups and individuals involved with the updating of the church after The Second Vatican Council, the ecumenical movement of the 1970s, the social justice initiatives of the 1980s and the synodal church program in the Bishop’s fourth decade at Victoria, in the 1990s.
He retired in 1999 as a globetrotting ambassador for peace and liberation theology throughout the western hemisphere and beyond. For example, my father James Easton Jamieson continually received letters from refugees world wide simply addressed to Bishop Remi De Roo, Victoria Canada. Bishop De Roo challenged this former military warrant officer to do refugee sponsorship work from 1979, which he carried out until his death in 2017.
This example is typical of the sort of participant’s input expected at the special event.
Patrick Jamieson, Victoria