Catholicism has for centuries played a central role in Francophone Canada. Even today, visitors notice the numerous villages and streets named after saints and the prominence of a large parish church at the centre of every community. The bond between language and religious identity was established naturally in the early years of French colonisation. Despite a rapid secularisation in recent decades, the imprint of Christianity on Quebec's society is still noticeable.

Francophone Canada refers per se more to a population than a place, though for the first century and a half of Christian presence in this land they tightly overlapped. The Francophone presence in Canada now extends to all provinces, but its institutional heart is in Quebec, which houses the majority of French-speakers in the country and is itself the only majority French-speaking province. For this reason, this essay focuses on the sociopolitical entity of Quebec, while leaving aside its Anglophone component.

In order to understand the contemporary reality of Christianity in Quebec, a journey through the various historical layers of Christian living is crucial. It will proceed in six stages. The first three uncover historical roots: the early presence in the seventeenth century, the regime change of the mid-eighteenth century, and the role as driving social force from the mid-nineteenth century to the twentieth century. The last three stages usher us into the contemporary period, from the ‘Quiet Revolution’ of the 1960s to the current realities.

Early Presence and Mystical Invasion

Although the French had already explored the territory of Canada in the sixteenth century, not until 1608 did Samuel de Champlain establish Quebec City as the first successful permanent colonial settlement. Religious communities soon came: first the Franciscan Récollets, then the Jesuits. These Catholic missionaries contacted the many Indigenous nations (Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois), patiently making inroads among peoples who were often semi-nomadic and whose culture was fiercely different. Many natives converted to Christianity. One of them was Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–80), born at Ossernenon. To live fully her Christian faith, she moved to the St Francis-Xavier mission, a Mohawk village of converts near Montreal. There, while living as an Indigenous, she devoted herself to prayer and works of charity with like-minded women, refusing to follow the custom to marry. She was the first North American Indigenous woman to be canonised, in 2012. On the side of the missionaries, some encountered a violent fate.