NOVALIS BOOK REVIEW: REMI DE ROO: PILGRIM AND PROPHET
We’ve been hearing a lot about synodality over the last couple of years, since Pope Francis announced the Synod on Synodality, a three-year worldwide process of discernment by lay people and ordained alike on how to move forward together as Church, the People of God.
The term “synod” was new to many of us at first, but it has become part of our vocabulary. We may have been part of a sharing circle in our parish or other Catholic community in 2022, when we were invited to offer input on our experience of Church today and our dreams and hopes for the future. Perhaps we followed the news stories of the first gathering of synod delegates – including lay women and men as voting members – in Rome in October 2023 as they engaged in conversations with colleagues from around the world. This synod is clearly a pivotal moment in the Church.
Bishop Remi De Roo (1924–2022) knew a thing or two about being synodal. As Bishop of Victoria, British Columbia, he called a synod in his diocese from 1986 to 1991, 35 years before Rome would launch a global one!
He wrote of this experience: “All of us together would be entering into this process of spiritual discernment, listening to the Spirit, listening to one another, and trying to perceive in prayer the orientation of our Church, the direction in which the Spirit was calling.” Later, he reflected: “I believe we need more of these synodal structures. We must encourage this form of evolution. It really represents a recovery of something ancient and fundamental.” Prophetic words from a fellow pilgrim on the journey.
To mark the life and work of Bishop Remi, who was born 100 years ago this month, Pearl Gervais and Douglas Roche have gathered a wide-ranging set of extracts from his writings and talks over many decades in Remi De Roo, Pilgrim and Prophet: Wisdom for Today’s Church in the World. This rich collection reveals the many areas to which De Roo dedicated his efforts and gave his heart: the role of the laity, poverty and homelessness, human rights, social justice, peace, Indigenous Peoples, ecology, youth, ecumenism and more. He saw all the faithful as equal in dignity through their baptism – a guiding principle for his ministry.
In his foreword to the book, Cardinal Michael Czerny, who considers Remi De Roo “a wise guide on the Church’s synodal journey,” writes: “Let’s not, therefore, read this rich book as a compendium of final positions…. Rather, allow [Remi] to turn his passions into the new questions which we, walking synodally, should be asking one another today and tomorrow, to let the Spirit raise Remi’s still pertinent questions among us.”
The following words of Remi De Roo are from a talk he gave in 1967, but they are timeless: “As prophets, all Christians, regardless of their situation in the world, are by their baptism missionaries and apostles. They are sent as heralds of the Word with Christ. In the pursuit of this missionary vocation, we must all be animated by this same missionary spirit of Christ, as ambassadors.” Amen!
Anne Louise Mahoney is managing editor of Novalis. She is the editor of Never-ending Love: Sharing Stories, Prayers and Comfort for Miscarriage and Infant Loss and Looking to the Laity: Reflections on Where the Church Can Go from Here and is the author of I Hope, a book for young children.
