Three decades for the Catholic Times

Many lay apostolates flourish within the Archdiocese of Montreal; one of them ‹ the Catholic Times ‹ has been working diligently for 30 years, bearing witness to the Good News in our times.

The Catholic Times is a Montreal-based tabloid that serves English-speaking Catholics within the diocese and throughout the province.

Founded in 1976 at the request of Bishop Leonard Crowley, it was established as "a community newspaper." Its goal, he wrote: to promote "an exchange among individuals and groups, so as to foster the harmonious coordination of apostolic and Church activity among members of the English-speaking Catholic community."

Incorporated as a nonprofit federal corporation in 1985 and supported by the Pillars Trust Fund, it is served by a small part-time staff and numerous volunteers.

Today, the newspaper is distributed to 65 parishes and missions, 40 of which are in the Archdiocese of Montreal. It features 16 pages, on average, of local, regional, national and international news. It also offers a window on the French-language Church in Quebec for its 10,300 readers.

In 1988, it was instrumental in setting up a Catholic news co-operative in Canada, Canadian Catholic News (CCN). Through the reporting in the Times, news of the Church in Quebec is regularly featured in the major Catholic newspapers that serve readers from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. The Times has also won numerous Canadian Church Press awards.

An anniversary mass for current and former staff and volunteers was held Sept. 9 at St. John Fisher church in Pointe-Claire. In his homily, Bishop Anthony Mancini said: "For 30 years the Catholic Times has tried to point out the actions that the Lord continues to perform in our times and, in so doing, the paper has done its part to overcome deafness and speechlessness.

"The paper has helped to construct the Church which is in Montreal, to support her mission and to facilitate the spirit of unity, necessary for the people of God, to be the people of God!

"What about the future? It all pretty much depends on the future of the Catholic Church in Montreal. The mission before us is one of generating new life. If we don¹t, our church will die! So we must do all we can to generate a new, young, faith-filled and educated Catholic community; a community of faith ready to take up its place in a post-modern world, in a secular city and in a multi-cultural, multi-religious environment."

Eric Durocher
Editor