Father Michel Marcil passed away on Friday, December 20, 2024, at the Résidence Notre-Dame de Richelieu, where he had lived since 2017. He was 83 years old. The memory loss from which he suffered before his arrival at Richelieu had worsened over the years, to the point where he had lost his ability to communicate verbally for some time. He passed away quietly in his sleep, following a urinary tract infection.
Michel was born on December 7, 1941, in Montreal. He had completed his high school and college studies in his native city, at Collège Sainte-Marie, before entering the Society of Jesus on August 14, 1962. After completing his novitiate at Saint-Jérôme, near Montreal, and taking his first vows, he spent two years studying philosophy at Collège de l’Immaculée-Conception in Montreal. During the first year, he expressed repeatedly to the provincial superior his desire to be sent to the missions. In the letter he wrote to him, he mentioned that he had already been thinking about it when he entered and that he had already told him about it during his novitiate. His desire was to go to Japan or to a country in the Far East, because “apostolic workers are few and far between there, the needs are great and the spiritual expectations of these peoples are very high”. After considering his request, the provincial decided to send him to Taiwan, along with another scholastic, Louis Gendron.
In Taiwan, Michel spent two years studying Mandarin. He then spent a regency year teaching French in Taipei and another year at the Institute of Social Studies (ISO) in Manila, Philippines, before starting his theology studies in 1971. He was ordained priest on June 25, 1974. After completing his tertianship in 1976-77, he took his final vows in the Province of China on April 22, 1977.
Michel’s apostolic life spanned Taiwan, Montreal and the United States, from 1978 to 2017. He carried within him a great missionary desire that took him a long time to realize. At first, he worked in parishes in and around Taipei, while learning Amoy, a Taiwanese language. He returned to Canada in 1979 and ministered in Montreal, in the parish of Immaculée-Conception, which was then entrusted to the Society, in the Missions Office and among the youth of a missionary movement. With the collaboration of a nun from a missionary congregation present in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he set up an organization called “Amitié-Chine”, whose aim was to provide information on the Catholic Church in China. He received the support of Canada’s two provincials for this initiative. On his first trip to mainland China in the spring of 1985, he felt inwardly confirmed in his mission to act as a liaison between Catholics there and Catholics here. In 1998, he became the North American coordinator of the Jesuit China Service, which was joined by the US Catholic China Bureau of the American Episcopate. His ability to speak several languages, especially Mandarin, his ease in public and his ability to build relationships with people from all walks of life played an important role throughout his missionary activity.
The illness that would mark his final years began to affect his memory as early as 2016. This led him to leave San Francisco and return to Montreal for a time, before settling in Richelieu.