marie paule giguere

The Catholic Church has excommunicated the Quebec-based Army of Mary movement that bases its teachings on the mystical visions of an 86-year-old woman who claims to be a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.

When a Catholic priest in the movement ordained six new priests on June 3 at their spiritual centre in the Quebec Archdiocese, the Church "had to intervene" said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, archbishop of Quebec, in a telephone interview.

Calling it a "very grave situation," the Vatican has declared the group heretical and schismatic and warns that anyone associated with it has incurred excommunication.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration July 11, but the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) released it Sept. 12.

"We hope this clarification will help the population and the people who are close to the Army of Mary to better see if they want to remain with the Catholic Church," said Ouellet. "They have to leave the organization and not attend their meetings and celebrations."

Deacons ordained
An Army of Mary priest, Father Jean-Pierre Mastropietro, had ordained some deacons early in the year, prompting Ouellet to issue a declaration against the group last March.

Had the movement been confined to his diocese, "my declaration would have been enough," he said, but the Army of Mary has adherents in English Canada and in several European countries. Also known as the Community of the Lady of All Nations, it claims to have 25,000 members worldwide.

When Mastropietro ordained priests in June, in violation of canon law, he also declared a new doctrine: that the Virgin Mary is a divine co-redemptrix. He then canonized one of the movement's members as a saint.

Ouellet said the Second Vatican Council deliberately avoided the term co-redemptrix in relation to Mary.

"It is clear and very developed in Catholic spirituality the presence and participation of Mary at the foot of the cross, and in the redemptive love of Jesus Christ, but as a creature," he said.

"Receiving the fruitfulness of the Redeemer and letting herself be completely pervaded, a sort of channel, she is not adding her own work of redemption."

"She believes in the work of the Redeemer, in the love of the Redeemer and that's her participation."

Mystical revelations
Marie-Paule Giguere founded the Army of Mary in 1971 based on her private, mystical revelations. A few years later, the then archbishop of Quebec granted it official Church status as a pious association. That status was revoked in 1987.

Giguere began referring to herself as a mystical incarnation of the Virgin Mary in the late 1970s.

Members believe in a "quinternity" instead of the Trinity, said Archbishop Terrence Prendergast in a telephone interview. In addition to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they include the Virgin Mary and Marie-Paule "who has likewise been divinized."

'Wonderful people'
Prendergast has served as a pontifical commissioner since 2003, trying to bring the more than 30 ordained Catholic priests and other movement members back to the fold. "I have lived with them, visited with them," he said. "They are wonderful people, well-intentioned."

"They live simply, chastely and obediently within their structures, but not obediently within the structures of the Church," he said. Many are young priests who, were it not for their false ideas and obedience to heavenly visions over the magisterium, would be attractive assets to their dioceses.

Prendergast said the group claims to believe everything the Church teaches and some additional doctrines the Church "has not come to" yet. They have told him they answer to heaven, even though these additional doctrines contradict the revealed teachings of the Church.

'Fortress mentality'
He described the group as having a "fortress mentality." The movement has been divisive of families, he said, when some members want to remain with the Catholic Church.

Sister Chantal Buyse issued a news release from the Army of Mary, defending Giguere as someone with an authentic mystical life and numerous charisms "all of which have served God's cause."

"It is with a sense of peace that we received this decision on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, a decision that heaven had announced to our foundress a long time ago," said the release.
Six Catholic nuns have been excommunicated for heresy after refusing to give up membership in a Canadian sect whose founder claims to be possessed by the Virgin Mary, the Diocese of Little Rock announced Wednesday.

The Rev. J. Gaston Hebert, the diocese administrator, said he notified the nuns of the decision Tuesday night after they refused to recant the teachings of the Community of the Lady of All Nations, also known as the Army of Mary.

The Vatican has declared all members of the Army of Mary excommunicated. Hebert said the excommunication was the first in the diocese's 165-year history.

"It is a painfully historic moment for this church," Hebert said.

The six nuns are associated with the Good Shepherd Monastery of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge in Hot Springs. Sister Mary Theresa Dionne, one of the nuns excommunicated, said the nuns will still live at the convent property, which they own.

"We are at peace and we know that for us we are doing the right thing," the 82-year-old nun said. "We pray that the church will open their eyes before it is too late. This is God's work through Mary, the blessed mother, and we're doing what we're asked to do."

At a news conference, Hebert said the nuns "became entranced and deluded with a doctrine that is heretical." He said church officials removed the Eucharist ― which Catholics revere as the body of Christ ― from the monastery on Tuesday night.

Hebert said the sect's members believe that its 86-year-old founder, Marie Paule Giguere, is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary and that God speaks directly through her.

Excommunication bars the nuns from participating in the church liturgy and receiving communion or other sacraments.

The diocese said the action was taken after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a declaration dated July 11 that the Army of Mary's teachings were heretical and automatically excommunicated any who embraced the doctrine.

Hebert said the diocese had known for years that the nuns were following the sect and said church officials in the past had encouraged them to come back into the fold.

According to the Catholic News Service, the Army of Mary was founded in Quebec in 1971 by Giguere, who said she was receiving visions from God.

Dionne said she does not know if Giguere is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, but said she believes God communicates through the sect's founder.

"She is doing only what God and Mary tells her to do," Dionne said.

A spokesman for the Army of Mary called the excommunication of the nuns and the other members of the sect an injustice. Father Eric Roy said Giguere has not claimed to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, and said the 86-year-old Quebec woman "receives graces" from the Virgin Mary and God.

"The Virgin Mary took possession of her soul. I would rather say it that way," said Roy, superior general of the Sons of Mary, an associated group. Vatican excommunicates members of a Quebec Catholic movement
Joseph Brean, National Post
Published: Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Calling it a "very grave situation," the Vatican has excommunicated members of a controversial Quebec Catholic movement, the Army of Mary, for their heretical beliefs that derive from the writings of Marie-Paule Giguère, an 86-year-old mystic who claims to be a reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.

In a judgment delivered to the group on Monday, and announced yesterday, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the ordinations of six priests in the Army of Mary this past June were illegitimate, because they were performed by a priest rather than a bishop. As a result, at least one recent marriage, performed by one of these new priests, is now regarded by the Vatican as null.

Further, the ruling says that anyone who participates in the Army of Mary, which has centres in Quebec City and Lac-Etchemin, Que., is in schism with the Catholic Church, and therefore automatically excommunicated.


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Marie-Paule Giguère
CanWest News Service

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Font: ****The group has been in conflict with the Vatican for at least 20 years - its members claim to be fully Catholic, but with extra beliefs - and so it received the ruling with equanimity, calling it the "will of God."

"In 1958, our foundress received from above, heard from above that she would be crucified by priests and bishops. It's only the realization today of such a message," said Father Eric Roy, Superior General of the Sons of Mary and a leading figure in the group. "We cannot go against our conscience."

Founded as a prayer group in 1971, and recognized by the Archbishop of Quebec four years later, the Army of Mary has been a headache for Canadian Catholic bishops ever since.

In her writings, Mme. Giguère described visions and messages she received from God, explaining that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is fully divine, and also that, as her modern incarnation, so is Mme. Giguère. Rather than the traditional Catholic Trinity - in which God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are each fully divine and part of a three-part deity - the Army of Mary now speaks of a "quinternity," including Mary and Mme. Giguère.

This reverence of the charismatic Mme. Giguère, and the inevitable comparisons to Joan of Arc and Teresa of Avila, helped it to spread beyond Quebec, with missions across Canada and in France, the United States, Austria, Jamaica and Italy. At one time it claimed 20,000 members, but that number is now far lower, although Fr. Roy would not estimate.

"There was always this suspicion that was around them, that they were doing something on the side, you know, teaching other things. It was always hard to tie them down, and I just tried to get them to come out and admit things," said Terrence Prendergast, Archbishop of Ottawa, who was appointed in 2003 by Pope John Paul II to be a mediator in the dispute.

"They would say that they would not subscribe to some of the limitations that we would put on the creed.

"They would say we hold everything that the Roman Catholic Church teaches, and then some things that the Church is not yet ready for," he said.

Yesterday, he criticized the belief that God has somehow willed their excommunication, which he called "victim theology."

"It's one of those ironies that they have been waiting for this and hoping for it. And probably their foundress has predicted it [but] I would have to find out after the fact, because that's usually when we find out that she's predicted something," he said. After 9/11, for example, she claimed to have envisioned the falling towers several years previously.

"The Church has been very patient with them. I've been very patient with them," Archbishop Prendergast said. "It's a kind of cult. I think they are very much under the sway of the foundress. Whatever she says counts for more important than what the Pope says."

Archbishop Prendergast's predecessor, Bishop Gilles Cazabon, had tried for five years to resolve the schism and made little progress.

In fact, until this week, things stood pretty much as they were 20 years ago, when in 1987 the late Cardinal Louis-Albert Vachon revoked the Army of Mary's status as a Catholic organization, which was meant as a warning of future excommunication. In 1999, Bishop Cazabon was appointed as Pontifical Commissioner, a sort of Papal envoy, but things remained stalled until 2001, when the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a doctrinal note in 2001 stating that the Army of Mary is not a "Catholic association."

Since then, Archbishop Prendergast said, the group's status has fallen among mainstream Catholics, and so the trend among Army of Mary devotees outside of Quebec has been to either recant their heretical beliefs and become fully Catholic, or to return to Quebec.

Things came to a crisis this June, however, when a leading Army of Mary priest called Father Jean-Pierre Mastropietro ordained six new priests, including a father and son. Under canon law, only a bishop can ordain priests.

"He simply accepted Marie-Paule Giguère's idea that you are now appointed to be Father John of the Church of John," Archbishop Prendergast said. "He calls the Church of Rome the 'Church of Peter' [Peter was the first pope and one of Jesus' 12 apostles]. And the Church of Peter, which is the Church of Authority I guess, is being 'transmutated' - that's the term they use - into the Church of John, the Church of Love. And that's where, of course, the Catholic Church can't agree."
He said he regrets the failure of the efforts at reconciliation, because most of the Army of Mary's priests - there are 39 at the Lac-Etchemin centre, for example, in addition to brothers and sisters of the order - are legitimately ordained, one even by the late Pope John Paul II.

But now that Fr. Mastropietro is wearing a Byzantine crown and "acting like a pope" himself, the final line has been crossed.

"I did my very best with these men," Archbishop Prendergast said.

"I like them. I would like them to be Catholic priests. We need Catholic priests, but we have to have Catholic priests who obey what the bishops say ... [But] once you decide Heaven can tell you what to do, it can tell you all kinds of things that go beyond the boundaries." Army of Mary vows to continue worship after rare excommunication
Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, September 14, 2007
A Quebec group that believes God speaks directly through its charismatic founder says it plans to keep saying mass, marrying couples, and ordaining priests even though the Vatican excommunicated its members this week.

Father Eric Roy said the group must obey God before it obeys Rome, and their foundress, Marie-Paule Giguère, "is the purified channel through which God shows us the path."

For years, the Vatican has been watching the Community of the Lady of All Peoples, also known as the Army of Mary.


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Font: ****In June, the group incurred Rome's final wrath when Father Jean-Pierre Mastropietro ordained six priests without official permission.

Rome ruled this week that, in effect, the group had excommunicated itself. Marc Cardinal Ouellet, archbishop of Quebec and primate of Canada, signed a declaration stating: "These ordinations are invalid; they inflict a grievous wound upon the Church."

But Father Roy, superior general of the Sons of Mary, an associated group, said the community took the rare sanction in stride; in fact, its members would have been surprised had they not been excommunicated.

"We were aware that this would come. (After the ordinations) we wouldn't expect them to do nothing."

In any event, the church's wrath was revealed to the mystic leader Marie-Paule almost 50 years ago.

"In 1958, the Lord told (Marie-Paule) that she would be crucified by her priests. ... She expected this."

Church officials -- most recently, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast -- tried for almost 10 years to persuade the group to fall in line.

In his efforts to resolve the conflict, Archbishop Prendergast stayed with the 120 or so priests, nuns and brothers at their centre in the scenic village of Lac Etchemin, southeast of Quebec City.

"They were really wonderful people. We ate together, did the dishes, prayed, celebrated mass. I found them very good, hard-working people. But something was askew."

That something centred on Marie-Paule, an 86-year-old grandmother whom some believe is the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.

"This is delicate," says Father Roy. "She says no, but ... the Blessed Virgin Mary has taken possession of her soul."

And does she defy Rome?

"She is torn apart. She is forced to obey God."

According to her website, she was born in 1921 in Sainte-Germain-de-Lac-Etchemin, the first of 10 children, and had a religious upbringing. By the age of 12, she was "hearing" voices and hoped to become a missionary. However, she married in 1944 and had five children.

The marriage ran into severe difficulties and in 1957, her spiritual director, her doctor, her priest, and finally, social services, all recommended she place her children in boarding school and return to live with her mother.

The next year, she received an order from God to write the story of her life. From April 20 to 27, 1958, the Virgin Mary gave Marie-Paule a course in spirituality, showing her an image of a possible event, making a wish clear, and then commanding her to act.

In 1971, Marie-Paule and several others made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Etchemin, and at that point, she