Father Alfred Groleau, O.M.I. is a retired Oblate priest living in St. Albert. He currently residing at Foyer Lacombe in St. Albert and is the Oblate House director. Fr. Alfred has regularly scheduled pastoral and priestly assignments within Foyer Lacombe, Covenant Care, and long-term care facilities. Fr. Alfred is gifted in three languages – French, English and Latin. He will tell you he is less gifted in Kiswahili and Urdu grammar
Fr. Alfred has regularly scheduled pastoral and priestly assignments within Foyer Lacombe, Convenant Care, and long-term care facilities. Fr. Alfred is gifted in 3 languages – French, English and Latin. He will tell you he is less gifted in Kiswahili and Urdu grammar.
His ministry included First Nations ministry at Kisemanito Centre, an Oblate-sponsored educational centre for First Nation Catholics, in Grouard as well as at Lac Ste. Anne. He was part of the Oblate formation ream at the former St. Charles Scholasticate seminary. Father Alfred’s ministry also took his to Pakistan as Scholastic Superior and Kenyar as Mission Superior and Formation Team Member. He was also the Superior for the Brother Anthony District for three years in 2016.
His 6o-year ministry has taken him from Alberta to Canada’s North to Kenya to Pakistan and back again. In his own words, he details his remarkable journey.
Therien is a little town just off the highway going to Bonnyville and Cold Lake. That’s where my family lived before we moved to Edmonton in 1948. I attended Grandin (Holy Child Catholic Elementary) School and served as a alter server at St. Joachim’s Church. I attended College St. Jean for high school.
At the age of 18, I decided to purse a vocation to religious priesthood with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Twenty-five young men began a novitiate in St. Norbert, Manitoba in August 1958. Twenty completed the year. After that I lived in Lebret, Saskatchewan in the beautiful Qu’Appelle Valley. During six years I did philosophical and theological studies as required for priesthood.
Returning to Edmonton I completed university studies for Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees and began teaching junior and senior high school, first at the high school at College St. Jean and then at J.H. Picard High School.
In 1975, I was given a sabbatical leave when and I obtained a master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa. Afterwards, the Oblates asked me to found a home for vocational discernment that we baptized Nicodemus House. While I was there, since I was in the neighborhood of the Royal Alexandra Hospital, I became a chaplain there. I also resumed some part-time teaching at J.H. Picard High School.
In the 1980s, I became director of the Kisemanito Centre (an Oblate-sponsored educational centre for First Nation Catholics) in Grouard, Alberta, just off Lesser Slave Lake. This was a centre for the training of catechists and leaders in indigenous communities. Then, I came back to Edmonton where I was assigned as the bursar of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Alberta.
I served as director of St. Charles Scholasticate (seminary) in St. Albert for two years and I was beginning a sabbatical year when I was relocated across the planet. This happened because I responded to a request coming from the general administration of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate asking for volunteers for three to five years where there was a need. The request somehow stuck to my fingers so I send it in – only to get a request three weeks later asking if I would accept to go to Pakistan. The need there for a Superior of a residence of seminarians fit too well with my curriculum vitae.
The project to Pakistan was put on hold for a while because of the events of September 11 in New York. Even so, I ended up in Karachi in November that year. Notwithstanding some questions when I arrived as to why I was caming there at such a time, I lived a peaceful five years in Karachi before I moved on to Nairobi in Kenya.
My move to Africa happened because Fr. Ken Forster was ending a nine- year term as Superior of the Oblate Mission in Kenya. I was asked to replace him. Four years later, Fr. Jim Fiori was chosen to be the Superior of the Mission and I moved to the Oblate house in Meru, four hours’ drive into the centre of the country and higher up into the mountain area. There I lived for five years helping to screen the candidates applying to join the Oblates.
There is a big difference between Kenya and Canada as regards Religious and Priestly vocations – and the same can be said for India, Asia, and Vietnam. In Canada, we are praying for priestly and religious vocations almost in desperation – the scene has drastically changed from 60 years ago.
So here I am today at the age of 84, looking back at 60 years of ordination. Most of my colleague and I came straight out of high school. Today, it is rare for priest to be ordained as young as we were. Today candidates are coming with some experience outside the academic world.